Disputed Statements

Hill Cumorah, Sacred Sites

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Point in Dispute

Currently States Whether this drumlin is the hill Cumorah of the Book of Mormon is unsettled within the movement. Camps: the traditional New York identification, used locally from the 1830s and assumed for a century; and the two-Cumorahs position, held by scholars working from Mesoamerican settings, placing the book's Cumorah far to the south and treating the New York hill as a distinct place of the same name.

According To The Latter Day Saint movement

Source By the Hand of Mormon: The American Scripture that Launched a New World Religion, Terryl L. Givens tier 1

Hinduism Arrives In Cambodia With The Kingdom Of Funan, Spread Events

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Start Year

Currently States 100

Chinese historical accounts place Funan's establishment around the first century CE; the source separately notes archaeological evidence for settlement in the region reaching back to the fourth century BCE, but that earlier settlement has no documented Hindu connection, so it is not used as this event's atom.

Source Funan (Wikipedia), Wikipedia contributors tier 3

Hirohito, Figures

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns How Its Legacy Is Contested

Currently States How much the 1946 rescript actually renounced

John W. Dower's Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II (W. W. Norton, 1999) examines Emperor Hirohito's 1946 Humanity Declaration, drafted under American occupation, against its actual wording. Dower's method is close textual and historical analysis of the declaration's drafting process, and he sets out two camps built from the same document: one reads the wording as narrow, denying only that Hirohito was an akitsumikami, a deity manifest in the world, while leaving the imperial house's descent from the sun goddess Amaterasu and the throne's sacral character otherwise standing; the other holds that this narrow claim was precisely the one the wartime state had rested its authority on, so denying it emptied the imperial institution's wartime ideological content regardless of what else the declaration left standing. Both camps agree the document was drafted under occupation conditions and that its English text circulated before the Japanese.

Source Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II, John W. Dower tier 1

Hitbonenut, Practices

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Origin Period Start Year

Currently States 1773

Its own text says the practice gives Chabad Hasidism its name and is its central discipline. Sources disagree on the exact year Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi formally founded Chabad as a distinct branch of Hasidism, with 1772, 1773 and 1775 all cited by reputable references; 1773 is used here as a middle point, not a settled date.

Source Tanya (Likkutei Amarim), Shneur Zalman of Liady tier 1

Hlautbolli, the Sacrificial Bowl, Sacred Objects & Ritual Items

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Origin Account

Currently States Whether the account preserves pre-Christian practice or is a literary construction modelled on the Christian liturgy is disputed

Hlautbolli, the sacrificial bowl used to catch blood in accounts of Norse pagan ritual, is described chiefly in medieval Icelandic sources written down after Iceland's conversion to Christianity, raising the question of how much reflects genuine inherited pre-Christian practice. John Lindow's Norse Mythology: A Guide to the Gods, Heroes, Rituals, and Beliefs (2001) records one camp holding that specific vocabulary preserved in skaldic verse, an older and more conservatively transmitted poetic form than the prose sagas, anchors a core of genuinely inherited pagan tradition within the later prose descriptions. The opposing camp holds the unusually orderly, systematic detail of the described ritual is itself evidence of a Christian author's literary imagination constructing a plausible pagan rite rather than transmitting a remembered one. The method is philological and literary-historical, weighing the skaldic vocabulary's transmission history against the narrative structure of the prose accounts embedding it. Because the same texts supply evidence for both readings, the origin account remains genuinely disputed.

Source Norse Mythology: A Guide to the Gods, Heroes, Rituals, and Beliefs, John Lindow tier 1

Hoa Hao Buddhism, Religions

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Adherents Today

Currently States Vietnam's government reports roughly one point three million registered Hoa Hao Buddhists, concentrated in the Mekong Delta; Hoa Hao's own expatriate and diaspora organizations report considerably higher counts, in some estimates several times that figure. The gap reflects both differing definitions of membership and continuing distrust between the state recognized church and independent Hoa Hao communities.

Two genuinely different countings, an official registration figure and community self-reported estimates, rather than a single number obscured by bad sourcing.

Source Hoa Hao Buddhism in the Course of Vietnam's History, Nguyen Long Thanh Nam (translated by Sergei Blagov) tier 3

Holy Grail, Artifacts & Relics

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Physical Claimants

Currently States Santo Caliz (Valencia), Sacro Catino (Genoa), Nanteos Cup (Wales)

Joe Nickell's Relics of the Christ (2007) surveys the several physical objects claimed across European churches as the Holy Grail, including the Valencia chalice and other candidate vessels. Nickell's method is comparative historical and forensic examination of each object's documented custodial history against the biblical and legendary accounts of the Grail, and he finds none of the surviving candidate objects has been authenticated as the vessel of the Last Supper by independent physical or documentary evidence.

Source Relics of the Christ, Joe Nickell tier 1

Holy Hell, Screen Works

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Scholarly Reception

Currently States Reviewers split on the film's craft even while agreeing on the strength of its subject: the Boston Globe treated it as a substantial account of the group's arc, while The Film Stage graded it C-, calling it "a disappointing misfire" hampered by excessive voiceover and pacing despite capturing, in its own words, "a documentary villain for the ages."

Recorded as debated because the two cited reviews reach opposite verdicts on the film's craft; neither is treated as the deciding account.

Source Sundance Review: Holy Hell (The Film Stage) tier 2

Holy Spirit, Doctrines

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Point in Dispute

Currently States Whether the Spirit proceeds from the Father alone or from the Father and the Son. The Latin addition of the Filioque to the creed divides the Western churches from the Orthodox East to this day.

According To Christianity

Timothy Ware, writing as Bishop Kallistos Ware, in The Orthodox Church (Penguin, 1993), sets out the Filioque dispute over whether the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father alone or from the Father and the Son, examining the Latin creedal addition's ninth century Western origin against the unaltered Eastern creed. The Catholic West and most Protestant confessions hold the double procession, filioque; the Orthodox East holds procession from the Father alone and rejects the Western addition as both theologically wrong and uncanonically inserted into an ecumenical creed without an ecumenical council's consent. Each camp holds its own reading to be the faith of the undivided early church, and Ware records that a millennium of theological dialogue has narrowed the tone of the dispute but not closed the underlying question.

Source The Orthodox Church, Timothy Ware (Kallistos Ware) tier 2

Holy Tunic of Argenteuil, Artifacts & Relics

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Blood Type

Currently States AB (reported; the grouping also claimed for the Shroud of Turin)

Two separate forensic literatures examine blood residue on these two textile relics and reach the same limit by different routes. Joe Nickell's Relics of the Christ (University Press of Kentucky, 2007) surveys forensic and pathological examination of Christian relics generally, including the Holy Tunic of Argenteuil, and finds that determining blood type from centuries-old, handled and previously restored cloth is compromised by degraded and contaminated material and by pigments such as iron oxide that can mimic blood under simple testing. Mark Guscin's The Oviedo Cloth (Lutterworth Press, 1998), a documentary and scientific study of the Sudarium specifically, likewise reports that the blood-type findings claimed for it rest on serological testing whose reliability on aged, degraded bloodstains outside a controlled forensic setting is itself disputed. Both studies conclude that blood typing an aged relic cannot be verified to ordinary forensic standard, which is why the same note applies to both objects.

Source Relics of the Christ, Joe Nickell tier 1

Holy Tunic of Argenteuil, Artifacts & Relics

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Rival Claim

Currently States The Holy Coat of Trier is a competing seamless-robe relic

Joe Nickell's Relics of the Christ (2007) compares the Holy Tunic venerated at Argenteuil in France against the rival Holy Robe venerated at Trier in Germany, both claimed as the seamless garment of John 19:23. Nickell's comparative method, examining both custodial histories against the same single biblical garment they each claim to be, finds that at most one of the two can be the actual garment described in John, since the gospel describes a single seamless robe rather than two.

Source Relics of the Christ, Joe Nickell tier 1

Homer, Historical Figures

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Place of Origin

Currently States The Oxford Classical Dictionary, 4th edition (Hornblower, Spawforth and Eidinow, eds., Oxford University Press, 2012) records that antiquity itself could not agree where Homer, the name attached to the Iliad and the Odyssey, was born: several Ionian cities claimed him, with Chios and Smyrna the two claims that persisted most strongly, a dispute the ancient world never resolved and that modern scholarship, still divided over whether one poet or an oral tradition of singers lies behind the name, has no independent means of settling either.

Source The Oxford Classical Dictionary, 4th edition, Simon Hornblower, Antony Spawforth and Esther Eidinow (eds.) tier 1

Homer, Historical Figures

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns How Its Legacy Is Contested

Currently States The Homeric question, unresolved since antiquity, asks whether the name traditionally placed in the eighth century BC belongs to one poet, to two, or to a tradition of oral singers whose work was fixed in writing only later; the Oxford Classical Dictionary (4th edition, Hornblower, Spawforth and Eidinow, eds., Oxford University Press, 2012) notes that no ancient life of Homer carries any independent authority.

Source The Oxford Classical Dictionary, 4th edition, Simon Hornblower, Antony Spawforth and Esther Eidinow (eds.) tier 1

Homer, Historical Figures

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Lifespan or Floruit Start Year

Currently States -750

The Oxford Classical Dictionary records that antiquity itself could not agree when Homer lived: Herodotus placed him some four hundred years before his own time, near 850 BCE, while other ancient writers proposed dates centuries earlier, closer to the Trojan War itself. Modern scholarship generally favors the second half of the eighth century BCE, built from the linguistic layering of the poems and from the archaeological horizon their material culture implies, with one quantitative linguistic study proposing 762 BCE specifically, but no consensus fixes an exact year, and the underlying Homeric Question, whether one poet composed the Iliad and Odyssey or the name stands for a tradition crystallized by more than one hand, means even the eighth century date describes when the poems took shape rather than a documented individual life.

Source The Oxford Classical Dictionary, 4th edition, Simon Hornblower, Antony Spawforth and Esther Eidinow (eds.) tier 1

Homer, Historical Figures

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Lifespan or Floruit End Year

Currently States -700

No source, ancient or modern, distinguishes a death year from a birth year for Homer; the entire dating debate concerns when the Iliad and Odyssey took their surviving form, not a tracked biography with two separate endpoints. The marker recorded here pairs with the debated eighth century BCE floruit recorded under lifespan-start-year and should be read the same way, as a conventional span around the disputed compositional date rather than an attested lifespan; some scholars place the Odyssey's composition later than the Iliad's, into the following century, which is part of why even this pairing is not settled.

Source The Oxford Classical Dictionary, 4th edition, Simon Hornblower, Antony Spawforth and Esther Eidinow (eds.) tier 1

Honduras, Countries

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Religious Composition

Currently States Almost entirely Christian, but now split nearly evenly between the Catholic Church and Evangelical Protestant churches; Pew's 2014 survey found 46 per cent Catholic and 41 per cent Protestant, and several later national polls have found Evangelicals the larger group.

Honduras's religious composition has shifted faster than almost anywhere else in Latin America, from a Catholic share above 90 per cent two generations ago to a near-even split today: Pew Research Center's 2014 survey found 46 per cent Catholic and 41 per cent Protestant, overwhelmingly evangelical, and several later national polls conducted since have found Evangelicals the larger of the two groups rather than Catholics. The disagreement recorded here is over which group currently holds the larger share, since Pew's single 2014 figure and the more recent national polls point in different directions, a genuine disagreement between survey instruments and dates rather than a dispute over the underlying trend, which every source agrees runs from Catholic toward Evangelical. Because the shift has been unusually fast and still apparently in progress, a survey conducted a few years after another can show a materially different balance without either being wrong, and only a survey conducted at or after the report's own date could say with confidence which group currently holds the larger share nationally.

Source Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020, Pew Research Center tier 2

Hongaku (Original Enlightenment), Doctrines

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Point in Dispute

Currently States Whether a teaching that declares the world as it stands already awakened leaves any reason to practise, and whether it worked to make existing social arrangements unquestionable. Both criticisms have been pressed inside Japan and outside it.

Source Original Enlightenment and the Transformation of Medieval Japanese Buddhism, Jacqueline I. Stone tier 1

Honi the Circle-Drawer's Rain, Miracles

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Investigation Verdict

Currently States Josephus's Antiquities independently describes a renowned rainmaker named Onias, active in the same period, whom most historians identify with the Mishnah's Honi.

The Mishnah records Honi ha-Meagel, a first century BCE Jewish miracle-worker, drawing a circle and refusing to leave it until God sent the rain he asked for during a drought. Flavius Josephus's Antiquities of the Jews independently records a renowned rainmaker named Onias, active in the same general period, whom most historians identify with Honi despite the two accounts describing his eventual fate differently. The atlas's cited edition is the eighteenth century Antiquities translation compiling Josephus's history of this period. The method is comparative textual identification, weighing the two accounts' shared reputation for rainmaking and rough contemporaneity against the fact that neither text names or cross-references the other directly, the kind of evidence that would make the identification certain. Because the identification rests on shared reputation and contemporaneity rather than mutual naming, it is widely accepted as the best explanation but is not treated as certain.

Source Antiquities of the Jews, Flavius Josephus tier 1

Honi the Circle-Drawer's Rain, Miracles

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Skeptical Explanation

Currently States Josephus reports Onias was stoned to death during a civil war for refusing to curse a besieged faction, while rabbinic tradition tells later stories of Honi's life without recording that death.

Josephus's Antiquities of the Jews reports that Onias, the rainmaker most historians identify with the Mishnah's Honi ha-Meagel, was stoned to death during a first century BCE civil war after refusing to curse the faction besieging his own community's leader. Rabbinic tradition, by contrast, tells later stories about Honi's life, including a report of a lengthy sleep, with no account of a death by stoning. The atlas's cited text is the eighteenth century Antiquities edition carrying Josephus's account. The method is comparative source criticism, reading the two traditions' endings for the same figure against each other for whether they can be reconciled as the same life differently remembered or represent a genuine discrepancy. Because no surviving source reconciles the two endings, historians treat the unresolved ending as the strongest evidence against certainty in the Onias-Honi identification, even though the identification otherwise remains the most widely accepted reading.

Source Antiquities of the Jews, Flavius Josephus tier 1

Hope, Virtues

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Origin Period

Currently States Stated by Paul at 1 Corinthians 13, a letter most scholars date to the mid 50s CE during his Ephesus ministry, though the precise year is not fixed. Unlike the cardinal virtues, already current in pagan Greek philosophy centuries earlier, hope's status as a named theological virtue begins with this Pauline text.

Source The Holy Bible, Anonymous (multiple authors) tier 1