Disputed Statements

Kindness, Virtues

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Origin Period

Currently States Kindness's literary ancestor is the Psychomachia of Prudentius, written around 400 CE, though the poem has no combatant matching kindness precisely. Its place opposing envy in the sevenfold contrary-virtue scheme, and even its name, humanitas, benevolentia or simply charity in various medieval lists, was fixed only later, in catechetical writing with no single author or date.

Source The Seven Deadly Sins: An Introduction to the History of a Religious Concept, with Special Reference to Medieval English Literature, Morton W. Bloomfield tier 1

King Arthur, Figures

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Historicity

Currently States Historicity debated

John T. Koch's edited Celtic Culture: A Historical Encyclopedia (ABC-CLIO, 2006) examines the earliest textual references to Arthur against the events they claim to describe. The encyclopedia's method is textual dating: no contemporary source names Arthur, and the earliest reference, the Historia Brittonum, is dated to around 830, three centuries after the events it describes. On that gap, scholarship is divided between a fifth or sixth century British military commander behind the later legend and an origin wholly in legend with no historical figure at all.

Source Celtic Culture: A Historical Encyclopedia, John T. Koch (ed.) tier 1

King Benjamin, Figures

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Historical Note

Currently States What the assembly scene is modelled on

Jan Shipps's Mormonism: The Story of a New Religious Tradition (University of Illinois Press, 1985) examines the Book of Mormon's account of King Benjamin's address to his gathered people. Shipps sets out two comparative readings of the same described scene: one compares the gathering by families in tents facing the temple to the autumn festival complex of the Hebrew Bible and reads the address as a covenant renewal ceremony of that ancient type; the other reads the same scene against the American camp meeting revival tradition of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the setting in which the Book of Mormon was actually published in 1830. Shipps records that both are readings of a described literary scene rather than an independently documented historical event, that neither has produced a documented line of textual transmission back to an ancient source, and that the two readings are not mutually exclusive.

Source Mormonism: The Story of a New Religious Tradition, Jan Shipps tier 1

King David, Figures

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Historicity

Currently States Historicity debated

Lester L. Grabbe's Ancient Israel: What Do We Know and How Do We Know It? (2007) surveys the archaeological dispute over King David's historicity, which turns on how tenth century BCE strata at sites such as Khirbet Qeiyafa and the City of David are dated and interpreted, a chronological argument about the reading of excavated material itself rather than a claim awaiting a future test. Grabbe records that camps exist among archaeologists over the same stratigraphy, differing on dating method rather than on what has been dug up.

Source Ancient Israel: What Do We Know and How Do We Know It?, Lester L. Grabbe tier 1

King David, Figures

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Lifespan or Floruit Start Year

Currently States -1010

The source calls this a traditional chronology, not an independently fixed date.

Source Ancient Israel: What Do We Know and How Do We Know It?, Lester L. Grabbe tier 1

King David, Figures

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Lifespan or Floruit End Year

Currently States -970

The source calls this a traditional chronology, not an independently fixed date.

Source Ancient Israel: What Do We Know and How Do We Know It?, Lester L. Grabbe tier 1

King Wen of Zhou, Figures

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Tradition

Currently States Credited by tradition with the hexagram order still called the King Wen sequence and with the judgments of the Zhou Yi

According To Confucianism

Richard J. Smith's Fathoming the Cosmos and Ordering the World: The Yijing (I Ching) and Its Evolution in China (University of Virginia Press, 2008) examines the traditional attribution of the Yijing's core text to King Wen of Zhou. Smith's method is philological dating, and he finds the core Zhou Yi text is dated on linguistic grounds to the early Western Zhou period, after King Wen's own lifetime, and reads best as an accumulated compilation of divination records rather than a single author's work; the excavated Mawangdui silk manuscripts, recovered in the 1970s, carry the same sixty-four hexagrams in an entirely different order from the received text, showing the familiar sequence was one arrangement among several rather than an original King Wen laid down himself.

Source Fathoming the Cosmos and Ordering the World: The Yijing (I Ching, or Classic of Changes) and Its Evolution in China, Richard J. Smith tier 1

Kingdom of Judah, Empires & Polities

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns State Religion

Currently States The cult of YHWH at the Jerusalem temple, maintained by the house of David. What that cult contained is argued: the inscriptions from Kuntillet Ajrud on the Judah-Sinai border invoke YHWH together with his asherah, which the biblical texts as they stand do not permit, and whether the word names a goddess or a wooden cult object of hers is itself disputed.

Source Kuntillet Ajrud (Horvat Teman): An Iron Age II Religious Site on the Judah-Sinai Border, Ze'ev Meshel tier 1

Kingdom of Judah, Empires & Polities

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Institutional Wealth or Finances

Currently States The Hebrew Bible's account of Solomon's Temple in Jerusalem (1 Kings) states that the innermost sanctuary's walls and floor were overlaid with gold amounting to 600 talents, or roughly 20 metric tons. Modern biblical archaeologists dispute the historicity of this figure: William G. Dever assesses the biblical description as undoubtedly excessive, and no direct archaeological evidence for the existence of Solomon's Temple has been found.

Recorded as debated rather than attested: the 600 talents figure is a biblical literary tradition rather than an independently verified treasury record, archaeologists including William G. Dever consider the description excessive, and no direct physical evidence of the Temple has been found.

Source Solomon's Temple (Wikipedia), Wikipedia contributors

Kingdom of Judah, Empires & Polities

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Wealth Figure As Of Year

Currently States -959

Circa 959 BCE follows a Josephus-based synchronism with the founding of Carthage cited in the article (958/9 BCE); this falls within, but is not identical to, the conventional 970 to 931 BCE range for Solomon's reign, and rests on the same disputed biblical chronology as the wealth figure itself.

Source Solomon's Temple (Wikipedia), Wikipedia contributors

Kingdom of Judah, Empires & Polities

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Basis of the Wealth Figure

Currently States Journalistic or Scholarly Estimate

Basis is the biblical text itself as read and assessed by modern scholars, not an excavated inventory; see the wealth-value StatusNote for the historicity dispute.

Source Solomon's Temple (Wikipedia), Wikipedia contributors

Kingdom of Kongo, Empires & Polities

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Associated Religion

Currently States Catholicism and BaKongo religion, and it is argued which of the two the result should be called: a Christianity understood through a Kongo cosmology of the living and the dead divided by water, or that cosmology reorganised around Christian symbols such as the cross, which was already meaningful before a crucifix arrived

Thornton argues for a genuine Kongolese Catholicism; MacGaffey emphasises the continuity of BaKongo cosmology beneath the Christian vocabulary; Fu-Kiau writes from inside the tradition for the coherence of the older system. Three named and current positions.

Source Religion and Society in Central Africa: The BaKongo of Lower Zaire, Wyatt MacGaffey tier 1

Kiteba Cilwe (Book of Revelation), Scriptures & Texts

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Description

Currently States Kiteba Cilwe (Book of Revelation, sometimes translated Book of Illumination) is, alongside the Mishefa Res (Black Book), one of the two traditionally named written scriptures of Yazidism, a short text concerning the god Melek Taus and creation, whose authenticity and age are themselves a matter of active scholarly debate rather than settled fact.

Modern Yazidi studies scholarship, beginning with Kreyenbroek, holds that both surviving manuscripts of the Kiteba Cilwe and the Mishefa Res are most likely nineteenth century compositions or reconstructions rather than transmissions of an ancient text, produced in response to outside demand for Yazidism to have written scripture; the Yazidi tradition's own primary living scriptural medium is oral, the qewls (sacred hymns). This is recorded as a genuine scholarly dispute rather than resolved either way.

Source Yezidism: Its Background, Observances and Textual Tradition, Philip G. Kreyenbroek tier 1

Kiteba Cilwe (Book of Revelation), Scriptures & Texts

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Attributed Author / Compiler

Currently States Traditionally reputed to be an authentic ancient Yazidi scripture (traditional)

Philip G. Kreyenbroek's Yezidism: Its Background, Observances and Textual Tradition, Edwin Mellen Press, 1995, examines both the Kiteba Cilwe and the Mishefa Res against the fact that Yazidism's own authoritative religious content is primarily oral, transmitted by qewwals, religious singers and reciters, rather than fixed in written scripture. Kreyenbroek's method is comparative and ethnographic: checking each written text's own transmission history, who copied, compiled or published it, and how it relates to the community's oral practice, against the oral tradition itself, and that examination does not clearly establish either document as an authentic internal scripture rather than an external compilation. Its own text states the resulting position directly, that authenticity is genuinely disputed and that the dispute itself, not the existence of the book, is the one settled fact.

Source Yezidism: Its Background, Observances and Textual Tradition, Philip G. Kreyenbroek tier 1

Kiteba Cilwe (Book of Revelation), Scriptures & Texts

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Attributed Author / Compiler

Currently States The prevailing scholarly view holds the manuscript itself to be a production made for the manuscript trade, though its content faithfully reflects genuine Yazidi oral tradition (critical)

Philip G. Kreyenbroek's Yezidism: Its Background, Observances and Textual Tradition, Edwin Mellen Press, 1995, examines both the Kiteba Cilwe and the Mishefa Res against the fact that Yazidism's own authoritative religious content is primarily oral, transmitted by qewwals, religious singers and reciters, rather than fixed in written scripture. Kreyenbroek's method is comparative and ethnographic: checking each written text's own transmission history, who copied, compiled or published it, and how it relates to the community's oral practice, against the oral tradition itself, and that examination does not clearly establish either document as an authentic internal scripture rather than an external compilation. Its own text states the resulting position directly, that authenticity is genuinely disputed and that the dispute itself, not the existence of the book, is the one settled fact.

Source Yezidism: Its Background, Observances and Textual Tradition, Philip G. Kreyenbroek tier 1

Kokochu, Historical Figures

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Lifespan or Floruit

Currently States Killed about 1206 to 1210; the sources place the episode differently. No birth year is recorded.

Christopher P. Atwood's Encyclopedia of Mongolia and the Mongol Empire (Facts on File, 2004) compares the two principal surviving Mongol-era chronicles, the Secret History of the Mongols and Rashid al-Din's Persian-language Jami al-Tawarikh, for their account of Kokochu's death, and finds the two sources date the killing differently. Atwood's method is comparative chronicle-reading, checking each text's internal chronological placement of the event against the other, and because the two chronicles were compiled from different court traditions with their own internal logic, both readings are defended in the modern scholarship rather than one having been shown to supersede the other.

Source Encyclopedia of Mongolia and the Mongol Empire, Christopher P. Atwood tier 1

Korban (The Israelite Offering), Rituals

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Standing as a Comparative Category

Currently States Used, but its validity as a comparative category is disputed

Jacob Neusner argued that the Mishnah's order of holy things is a post-destruction systematisation whose interest is coherence rather than record, and that little of its fine procedure can be taken as description of practice before the Temple fell. Against that, historians who read it alongside Josephus, Philo and the Qumran material hold that its institutional picture is broadly continuous with pre-70 practice even where individual details diverge. The dispute concerns one body of ancient rabbinic legal writing, the order of the Mishnah called Kodashim, and it is worked by comparing that text against independent witnesses from the same centuries rather than against any excavated remains, since the Temple itself no longer stands to be examined. Neusner reads the Mishnah's own systematic shape as evidence it was composed for coherence after the practice it describes had already ended; the opposing reading sets its procedural detail beside Josephus's priestly testimony, Philo's account of temple practice and procedural material from Qumran, and finds enough agreement to argue the Mishnah preserves genuine memory rather than pure construction. Shaye Cohen's From the Maccabees to the Mishnah, cited here, and the article on the offerings' internal logic set out both readings without resolving them, which is why korban's standing as a comparative category remains debated.

Source From the Maccabees to the Mishnah, Shaye J. D. Cohen tier 1

Korban (The Israelite Offering), Rituals

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Scholarly Standing Detail

Currently States Shaye J. D. Cohen's From the Maccabees to the Mishnah (Westminster John Knox Press, 2006) notes that while the Priestly legislation of Leviticus sets out korban's basic legal classes, the burnt, purification, reparation, well being and grain offerings, most of the procedural detail describing how Second Temple sacrifice was actually performed comes from the Mishnah, redacted around 200 CE, more than a century after the Temple's destruction in 70 CE ended the practice entirely.

Source From the Maccabees to the Mishnah, Shaye J. D. Cohen tier 1

Kotan-kar Kamuy, Deities

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Contested or Appropriated Modern Use

Currently States Identity Uncertain

Kotan-kar Kamuy is named in Ainu oral tradition as a maker and teacher figure, and two of the principal twentieth-century collections of that tradition record his functions differently. Neil Gordon Munro's Ainu Creed and Cult, based on fieldwork among Ainu communities and published posthumously in 1962, tends to keep the land-making and the culture-teaching functions attached to separate figures, while John Batchelor's earlier collection, compiled from missionary fieldwork beginning in the late nineteenth century, is less consistent about the distinction. The method behind both is ethnographic fieldwork, recording oral narrative directly from Ainu narrators in different communities and at different times rather than working from a single fixed text, since Ainu tradition was transmitted orally rather than through a canonical scripture. Because the two collections drew on different communities and narrators across several decades, the variation is read as evidence of genuine difference between local Ainu oral traditions rather than as an error in either collector's own record.

Source Ainu Creed and Cult, Neil Gordon Munro tier 1

Krodha (Anger), Vices

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Origin Period

Currently States Krodha's Hindu registration, the second of the arishadvarga, is attested in the composite dharmashastra and epic corpus by the early centuries CE, a broad range rather than a fixed date on P. V. Kane's standard scholarly reckoning. Its Jain registration, as one of the four kashayas, carries the separate dating of the Tattvartha Sutra, placed by most scholars in the second through fifth centuries CE.

Source History of Dharmasastra, Volume V, P. V. Kane tier 1