Disputed Statements

Nembus, Fixed Stars

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Origin of the Name

Currently States Disputed. Johann Bayer's 1603 Uranometria records it as of Arabic origin, but the form of the name reads as Latin rather than Arabic, possibly tied to the sword Perseus used to behead Medusa. An alternative Arabic name for the same star, Al Anfal, "the spoils of war", is also recorded.

Source The Fixed Stars and Constellations in Astrology, Vivian E. Robson tier 2

Nemontemi, Veintenas

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Approximate Gregorian Span

Currently States The last days of January into the first day of February

Scholars have proposed several correlations between the xiuhpohualli year and the Gregorian calendar. The month range given here follows one widely reproduced reconstruction and is offered for relative placement only, not as a settled date: the 365 day count carried no intercalated leap day, so its alignment with the solar year is understood to have drifted across the centuries of its use, and colonial era testimony was recorded decades after the practice had ended.

Source The Aztecs (Smith, 3rd edition), Michael E. Smith tier 1

Neolithic, Historical Periods

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Principal Religious Traditions

Currently States None can be named. What the period leaves is architecture, burial, figurine and deposit, so every religious reading of it, including whether its great buildings are sanctuaries at all, is inference from material rather than report from a tradition

Source So Fair a House: Gobekli Tepe and the Identification of Temples in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic of the Near East, E. B. Banning tier 1

Nerthus, Deities

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Standing as a Comparative Category

Currently States Debated

Nerthus rests on exactly one ancient testimony, Tacitus, writing as an outside Roman observer rather than a participant, so every further detail beyond his bare description, which tribes took part, how widely the cult spread, whether it continued past his own century, is scholarly inference rather than independent attestation. The clearest scholarly puzzle is the name itself: Nerthus is the precise linguistic ancestor of Old Norse Njordr, a MALE sea god in the later Eddic sources, and specialists read the mismatch as evidence that an earlier, possibly paired or twinned Germanic earth and sea deity later split along gender lines in different regional traditions, though which half is older, or whether that account is right at all, is not settled.

Source Dictionary of Northern Mythology, Rudolf Simek, translated by Angela Hall tier 1

Nestorianism, Doctrines

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Held By

Currently States A fifth century position associated with Nestorius, patriarch of Constantinople, holding the union of Christ divine and human natures to be looser than the mainstream confessed; condemned at the Council of Ephesus in 431 and rejected by the historic Chalcedonian churches. Communities descending from those who did not accept Ephesus ruling continue as the Assyrian Church of the East, which disputes that it holds what was condemned under this name, a live scholarly and ecumenical question rather than a settled one.

Modern historians and the Assyrian Church of the East itself dispute whether the position condemned at Ephesus matches what Nestorius actually taught or what the Church of the East actually holds; the 1994 Common Christological Declaration between Rome and the Assyrian Church of the East treated the christological difference as substantially terminological rather than a real disagreement.

Source The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine, Jaroslav Pelikan tier 1

Nestorianism, Doctrines

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Principal Proponent

Currently States Nestorius, patriarch of Constantinople from 428 to 431, though how much of the position later condemned under his name he actually held is itself disputed by historians.

Almost nothing survives of Nestorius own case except through his opponents and his later Bazaar of Heracleides; historians read that surviving material differently on whether he held a genuine two person Christology.

Source The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine, Jaroslav Pelikan tier 1

Nestorius, Historical Figures

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Standing as a Comparative Category

Currently States Whether Nestorius actually taught the two persons doctrine condemned under his name

Nestorius's own Bazaar of Heracleides, written in his final exile and rediscovered in a Syriac manuscript in 1889, published in English translation by G. R. Driver and Leonard Hodgson (Clarendon Press, 1925), let scholars read Nestorius's actual Christology directly for the first time since his condemnation at Ephesus in 431, rather than only through the hostile summaries of his opponents. Since that rediscovery, many scholars comparing the Bazaar's own statements against the Christological formula later adopted at Chalcedon in 451 read Nestorius's actual position as reconcilable with orthodox Chalcedonian belief, and hold he was condemned for a more extreme position, associated with his name by opponents, than the one his own writing states; others maintain the council's original condemnation read his teaching correctly even in light of the Bazaar.

Source The Bazaar of Heracleides, Nestorius, translated by G. R. Driver and Leonard Hodgson tier 1

Netjer, One and Many, Doctrines

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Point in Dispute

Currently States Whether the monolatrous formulation describes Kemeticism at large or only the teaching of one named body. Independent Kemetics, who practise outside any house, frequently reject it and describe themselves as straightforwardly polytheist, and this is one of the clearest lines inside the modern movement.

Source Kemetic Orthodoxy: the faith and its practice, Tamara L. Siuda tier 3

New Testament, Scriptures & Texts

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Attributed Author / Compiler

Currently States Apostles and their associates (traditional)

Mark Goodacre's The Case Against Q: Studies in Marcan Priority and the Synoptic Problem, Trinity Press International, 2002, argues against the widely assumed hypothetical Q source, a document no manuscript of which has ever been found, that is traditionally posited to explain material shared by Matthew and Luke but absent from Mark. Goodacre's method is close literary and redaction-critical comparison of the parallel passages across the three Gospels, and he argues the same pattern of agreement is explained at least as well by Luke having read and directly edited Matthew, removing the need to posit a lost source at all. That argument sits within the wider, still-live Synoptic Problem of how Matthew, Mark and Luke relate to one another; what is not in dispute, and what Goodacre's own study takes as its starting point, is that the Gospels are themselves anonymous, their traditional author-names being second century ascriptions rather than the writers' own signatures, while Paul's undisputed letters, whose authorship is secure, remain the earliest Christian writings.

Source The Case Against Q: Studies in Marcan Priority and the Synoptic Problem, Mark Goodacre tier 1

New Testament, Scriptures & Texts

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Attributed Author / Compiler

Currently States Pauls undisputed letters earliest (c. 50s CE), the Gospels anonymous (c. 65-100 CE)

Mark Goodacre's The Case Against Q: Studies in Marcan Priority and the Synoptic Problem, Trinity Press International, 2002, argues against the widely assumed hypothetical Q source, a document no manuscript of which has ever been found, that is traditionally posited to explain material shared by Matthew and Luke but absent from Mark. Goodacre's method is close literary and redaction-critical comparison of the parallel passages across the three Gospels, and he argues the same pattern of agreement is explained at least as well by Luke having read and directly edited Matthew, removing the need to posit a lost source at all. That argument sits within the wider, still-live Synoptic Problem of how Matthew, Mark and Luke relate to one another; what is not in dispute, and what Goodacre's own study takes as its starting point, is that the Gospels are themselves anonymous, their traditional author-names being second century ascriptions rather than the writers' own signatures, while Paul's undisputed letters, whose authorship is secure, remain the earliest Christian writings.

Source The Case Against Q: Studies in Marcan Priority and the Synoptic Problem, Mark Goodacre tier 1

New Testament, Scriptures & Texts

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Attributed Author / Compiler

Currently States With the Synoptic Problem debated (critical)

Mark Goodacre's The Case Against Q: Studies in Marcan Priority and the Synoptic Problem, Trinity Press International, 2002, argues against the widely assumed hypothetical Q source, a document no manuscript of which has ever been found, that is traditionally posited to explain material shared by Matthew and Luke but absent from Mark. Goodacre's method is close literary and redaction-critical comparison of the parallel passages across the three Gospels, and he argues the same pattern of agreement is explained at least as well by Luke having read and directly edited Matthew, removing the need to posit a lost source at all. That argument sits within the wider, still-live Synoptic Problem of how Matthew, Mark and Luke relate to one another; what is not in dispute, and what Goodacre's own study takes as its starting point, is that the Gospels are themselves anonymous, their traditional author-names being second century ascriptions rather than the writers' own signatures, while Paul's undisputed letters, whose authorship is secure, remain the earliest Christian writings.

Source The Case Against Q: Studies in Marcan Priority and the Synoptic Problem, Mark Goodacre tier 1

Nezahualcóyotl, Historical Figures

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns How Its Legacy Is Contested

Currently States That he worshipped one invisible creator, Tloque Nahuaque, raised a temple to him with no image in it, and opposed human sacrifice.

Encyclopaedia Britannica's online entry (2024) traces the claim that Nezahualcoyotl held monotheistic religious beliefs to colonial-era sources, principally the writings of his own descendant Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxochitl a century after his death. Britannica's entry sets out two readings: one takes it as genuine Texcocan tradition, evidence of an authentic strand of pre-conquest Nahua philosophical speculation about a single supreme deity; the other takes it as a construction made under Christian colonial rule, presenting a converted Mexico with an acceptably monotheistic pagan ancestor. Because the claim survives only through Ixtlilxochitl's own descendant-authored account, with no independent pre-conquest corroboration, neither reading can be checked against a source outside that single family transmission.

Source Encyclopaedia Britannica (online academic reference), Encyclopaedia Britannica editors tier 2

Nezahualcóyotl, Historical Figures

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns How Its Legacy Is Contested

Currently States The songs attributed to him in the Cantares Mexicanos and the Romances de los señores de la Nueva España.

Encyclopaedia Britannica's online entry (2024) examines the two manuscript collections of Nahuatl poetry attributed to Nezahualcoyotl, both alphabetic transcriptions written down decades after the Spanish conquest by scribes trained in the new Latin alphabet, and finds neither carries a verifiable contemporary attribution to him personally. Some scholars accept a genuine Nezahualcoyotl corpus within the collections on internal stylistic and thematic grounds; others hold that individual authorship in the European sense was not how Nahua song composition worked, and that attaching a single named composer's name to inherited or communally performed verse is a later, Spanish-influenced reading habit projected back onto material that was not originally authored that way.

Source Encyclopaedia Britannica (online academic reference), Encyclopaedia Britannica editors tier 2

Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed, Creeds & Confessions

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Point in Dispute

Currently States The Filioque. The Latin West added the words and the Son to the article on the Spirit's procession. The East holds that no local church may alter an ecumenical creed, and many Orthodox theologians reject the doctrine as well as the addition.

Two distinct questions are in play, the canonical one about who may amend a creed and the theological one about procession, and they are often argued as though they were one.

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

Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed, Creeds & Confessions

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns How Its Legacy Is Contested

Currently States Whether the text was composed at Constantinople in 381 or adapted there from an existing baptismal creed. It is not quoted as a conciliar creed in any source before 451, which is seventy years of silence.

Kelly sets out the case for an adapted Jerusalem or Antiochene baptismal creed; others hold to composition at the council. No document settles it.

Source Early Christian Creeds, 3rd edition, J. N. D. Kelly tier 1

Niceta of Remesiana, Historical Figures

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns How Its Legacy Is Contested

Currently States The Te Deum has been ascribed to Niceta, bishop of Remesiana from around 366 to his death around 414, since the ninth century. The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (3rd revised edition, Cross and Livingstone, eds., Oxford University Press, 2005) treats the ascription as not secure, since other names have also been proposed for the hymn's authorship.

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

Niceta of Remesiana, Historical Figures

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Lifespan or Floruit Start Year

Currently States 335

The source gives this year as about, its own approximate estimate rather than a fixed date.

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

Niceta of Remesiana, Historical Figures

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Lifespan or Floruit End Year

Currently States 414

The source gives this year as about, its own approximate estimate rather than a fixed date.

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

Nicholas, Figures

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Historicity

Currently States Historicity debated

The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, third revised edition, edited by F. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (Oxford University Press, 2005), records that a fourth century bishop of Myra in Lycia named Nicholas is probable on the strength of his early cult and church dedications, but that nothing certain is known of his actual life and that every specific story attached to his name, from the dowry gift to the resurrected children, is a later hagiographical addition rather than a contemporary record.

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

Nicolaus Copernicus, Historical Figures

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns How Its Legacy Is Contested

Currently States An unauthorized preface added by the editor Andreas Osiander framed heliocentrism as a calculating device rather than Copernicus's own claimed physical truth, misleading many early readers about his actual position

Source On the Revolutions (De revolutionibus orbium coelestium), dedicatory preface to Pope Paul III, Nicolaus Copernicus (Edward Rosen, trans.) tier 1