Disputed Statements

Lü Dongbin, Deities

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Historicity

Currently States Legendary: known from narrative tradition, not the historical record

The most widely worshipped of the Eight Immortals is generally accepted, per the Encyclopedia of Taoism (Fabrizio Pregadio, ed., 2008), to be built on a real Tang dynasty figure of that name, but everything that makes him recognisable today, the failed examination, the dream at Zhongli Quan's inn that shows him a whole ruined official career in the time it takes millet to cook, the tests and the eventual transcendence, is legendary material layered onto that figure long after his lifetime, and the datings proposed for the historical man vary widely across the sources that try to fix him. That gap between an accepted historical kernel and an extensively legendary biography is why the status is recorded as legendary rather than as attested.

Source The Encyclopedia of Taoism, Fabrizio Pregadio (ed.) tier 1

Lü Dongbin, Deities

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Historicity Detail

Currently States Fabrizio Pregadio's Encyclopedia of Taoism (Routledge, 2008) records that scholarship generally accepts a Tang dynasty figure named Lu Dongbin lies behind the cult of the most widely worshipped of the Eight Immortals, but the biography attached to him, a failed examination candidate shown in a dream by Zhongli Quan the ruin awaiting a successful official career and waking before his cooking millet had finished, is legendary rather than documentary, and the datings different sources offer for his life vary widely rather than converging on one period.

Source The Encyclopedia of Taoism, Fabrizio Pregadio (ed.) tier 1

Lucifer, Figures

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Status Within the Tradition

Currently States The identification of Lucifer with Satan rests on a patristic reading of Isaiah 14's taunt against a fallen Babylonian king as a veiled account of a rebel angel's fall, an interpretation the prophetic text itself does not make explicit.

Isaiah 14 names no angel and describes the fall of an earthly Babylonian king in mocking poetic terms; early Christian writers, reading Luke 10:18's image of Satan falling like lightning alongside this passage, fused the two into a single narrative of a rebel angel's fall, a reading many modern biblical scholars regard as a later theological overlay rather than the text's own plain sense.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised edition, F. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.) tier 1

Luo, Pantheons

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Divine Headship

Currently States A supreme creator who withdrew from active rule and receives little direct cult

Okot p'Bitek argued that describing Luo religion as headed by a supreme high god owes more to missionary translation than to the tradition itself. The ethnographic accounts that do describe Nyasaye that way remain in print, and the two readings have not been reconciled.

Source Encyclopedia of Religion, Mircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.) tier 1

Lust (Luxuria), Vices

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Origin Period

Currently States Rooted in Evagrius Ponticus's eight tempting thoughts, set out from the Egyptian desert monastic settlements of Nitria, Kellia and Scetis around the late fourth century CE, and carried west by John Cassian. Gregory the Great reduced the eight to the familiar seven, lust among them, in his Moralia in Job around 590 CE.

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

Lutheranism, Denominations

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Adherents Today Minimum

Currently States 78000000.000000

The Lutheran World Federation's own count of its member churches' baptized membership stands at just over 78 million, the more conservative, directly-counted bound. Broader estimates of everyone belonging to the worldwide Lutheran tradition, including church bodies outside the LWF such as the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, run as high as 90-95 million.

Source More Than 78 Million Lutherans in LWF Member Churches (Lutheran World Federation), The Lutheran World Federation tier 2

Lutheranism, Denominations

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Adherents Today Maximum

Currently States 95000000.000000

The Lutheran World Federation's own count of its member churches' baptized membership stands at just over 78 million, the more conservative, directly-counted bound. Broader estimates of everyone belonging to the worldwide Lutheran tradition, including church bodies outside the LWF such as the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, run as high as 90-95 million.

Source More Than 78 Million Lutherans in LWF Member Churches (Lutheran World Federation), The Lutheran World Federation tier 2

M, Alphabet Letters

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Chaldean Letter Value

Currently States 4

According To Modern planetary numerology, the scheme called Chaldean

The values recorded here follow Cheiro's Book of Numbers (Cheiro, the pen name of William John Warner, published by Herbert Jenkins, London, 1926), the most widely reproduced version of the so-called Chaldean numerology table. Cheiro's own text names no ancient Chaldean source for the letter values it assigns, and comparing it against other published numerology tables from the same and later periods finds no agreement between them on several letters; no Mesopotamian or Chaldean text has ever been produced that contains a comparable letter-number correspondence. That comparison is why historians of the modern occult treat "Chaldean" as a nineteenth and twentieth century marketing label rather than a checkable lineage claim. The value recorded here is Cheiro's published reading, not a settled fact.

Source Cheiro's Book of Numbers, Cheiro (William John Warner) tier 3

Machig Labdron, Figures

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Lifespan or Floruit Start Year

Currently States 1055

The source marks this year circa, its own approximate estimate rather than a fixed date.

Source The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism, Robert E. Buswell Jr. and Donald S. Lopez Jr. tier 1

Machig Labdron, Figures

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Lifespan or Floruit End Year

Currently States 1149

The source marks this year circa, its own approximate estimate rather than a fixed date.

Source The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism, Robert E. Buswell Jr. and Donald S. Lopez Jr. tier 1

Mada (Pride), Vices

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Origin Period

Currently States Mada as the fifth of the arishadvarga, the six enemies of the self, grouped by the Bhagavad Gita among the qualities of the demonic nature, asuri sampad, is attested in the dharmashastra and epic literature by the early centuries CE. P. V. Kane's History of Dharmasastra, Volume V (Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, 1958), the standard reference for dating this literature, treats the precise dating of individual dharmashastra texts as a matter of ongoing scholarly reconstruction rather than settled chronology, so the scheme's origin period is bounded only broadly.

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

Madhyamaka, Denominations

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Defining Doctrinal Position

Currently States Rangtong: emptiness of self-nature

Both the rangtong and the shentong readings of Madhyamaka claim Nagarjuna, and the Tibetan schools divide over which of them the texts support. The atlas records the division rather than resolving it.

Source Introduction to Tibetan Buddhism, John Powers tier 1

Madhyamaka, Denominations

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Origin Period Start Year

Currently States 150

Nagarjuna founded Madhyamaka, dated here to the second or third century CE, but no contemporary record fixes the date more closely. Paul Williams's Mahayana Buddhism: The Doctrinal Foundations (Routledge, 1989), a scholarly survey of Mahayana thought's doctrinal history, treats Nagarjuna's traditional biography as surviving only in hagiographic tradition compiled well after his death rather than by a contemporary. The method is historical, reading the philosophical content and citation pattern of texts attributed to him against the developing Mahayana corpus to bracket a plausible working date, since no independent inscription or dated document names him directly. Because the evidence brackets a span rather than fixing a year, the atlas records the start of that span, around 150 CE, as debated rather than settled.

Source Mahayana Buddhism: The Doctrinal Foundations, Paul Williams tier 1

Mae Nak Phra Khanong, Deities

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Historicity

Currently States Legendary: known from narrative tradition, not the historical record

Thai popular tradition places Nak's life in the reign of King Mongkut in the mid nineteenth century and points to records of a woman of that name in Phra Khanong district, but no contemporary documentary record of her death or haunting survives, and scholars treat the story as legend shaped and reshaped through more than a century of retelling rather than as settled biography.

Source The Lovelorn Ghost and the Magical Monk: Practicing Buddhism in Modern Thailand, Justin Thomas McDaniel tier 1

Magnanimity, Virtues

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Origin Period

Currently States Named in Book Four of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, composed at his Lyceum in Athens and generally placed in his later career, the 330s to 320s BCE. The Ethics survives through the medieval manuscript tradition rather than as an autograph, and scholars continue to debate whether it reached its present form as Aristotle's own draft or as lecture notes edited after his death, so its precise date of composition is bounded only broadly.

Source Virtue Ethics (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry), Rosalind Hursthouse and Glen Pettigrove tier 2

Mahanirvana Tantra, Esoteric Texts

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Era of Composition Start Year

Currently States 1750

Although the text presents itself with the authority of an ancient tantra, the earliest external evidence and its close alignment with Bengali reformist religious thought place its actual composition in the late eighteenth century, with individual estimates ranging from around 1773 to 1780 up to the early nineteenth century, well before its first printed edition around 1876. Teun Goudriaan and Sanjukta Gupta's survey situates it among the more reformist, less transgressive tantric texts, consistent with a composition date centuries later than the tradition it claims to continue.

Source Hindu Tantric and Sakta Literature (Teun Goudriaan and Sanjukta Gupta), Teun Goudriaan and Sanjukta Gupta tier 1

Mahanirvana Tantra, Esoteric Texts

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Era of Composition End Year

Currently States 1810

Although the text presents itself with the authority of an ancient tantra, the earliest external evidence and its close alignment with Bengali reformist religious thought place its actual composition in the late eighteenth century, with individual estimates ranging from around 1773 to 1780 up to the early nineteenth century, well before its first printed edition around 1876. Teun Goudriaan and Sanjukta Gupta's survey situates it among the more reformist, less transgressive tantric texts, consistent with a composition date centuries later than the tradition it claims to continue.

Source Hindu Tantric and Sakta Literature (Teun Goudriaan and Sanjukta Gupta), Teun Goudriaan and Sanjukta Gupta tier 1

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, Historical Figures

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Lifespan or Floruit

Currently States Maharishi Mahesh Yogi's death in the Netherlands in 2008 is firmly dated, but his birth year is not settled: the record gives a range between 1911 and 1918 in circulation, and his own name at birth, Mahesh Prasad Varma, and his origin-place carry a similar discrepancy between his own passport and disciple-derived accounts. Paul Mason's Maharishi Mahesh Yogi: The Biography of the Man Who Gave Transcendental Meditation to the World (Premanand, 2020) is the source recording this range of circulating birth dates rather than resolving it to one.

Source Maharishi Mahesh Yogi: The Biography of the Man Who Gave Transcendental Meditation to the World, Paul Mason tier 2

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, Historical Figures

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Place of Origin

Currently States His own passport gives "Pounalulla," India. Disciple-derived accounts instead place his birth in the village of Chichli near Jabalpur, in what was then the Central Provinces of British India (now Madhya Pradesh).

Paul Mason's Maharishi Mahesh Yogi: The Biography of the Man Who Gave Transcendental Meditation to the World (Premanand, 2020) compares the Maharishi's own passport, which gives his birthplace as Pounalulla, India, against disciple-derived biographical accounts that instead place his birth in the village of Chichli near Jabalpur. Mason's biographical method, checking official documents against movement-produced hagiography, finds the sources also disagree on his birth year, variously given as 1911, 1917 or 1918, compounding the location uncertainty, and concludes no consensus exists because the Maharishi himself, as a monastic renunciate, deliberately relinquished and did not correct conflicting accounts of his pre-monastic identity and family background.

Source Maharishi Mahesh Yogi: The Biography of the Man Who Gave Transcendental Meditation to the World, Paul Mason tier 2

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, Historical Figures

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Lifespan or Floruit Start Year

Currently States 1917

His birth is recorded in biographical sources as around 1917 or 1918 in central India; no civil birth record survives to fix the exact year, and the earlier of the two commonly cited years is recorded here.

Source Maharishi Mahesh Yogi: The Biography of the Man Who Gave Transcendental Meditation to the World, Paul Mason tier 2