Disputed Statements

Bayazid Bistami, Historical Figures

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Lifespan or Floruit End Year

Currently States 874

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

Source The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd edition, P. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C. E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel and W. P. Heinrichs (eds.) tier 1

Bayazid Bistami, Historical Figures

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Lifespan or Floruit Start Year

Currently States 804

Standard reference works give his birth as around 804 CE in Bastam, in the Qumis region under Abbasid rule; as with most Sufi figures of this period the exact year rests on later biographical tradition compiled generations afterward rather than on a contemporary civil or religious record made at his birth.

Source The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd edition, P. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C. E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel and W. P. Heinrichs (eds.) tier 1

Bear, Animals & Totems

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Contested or Appropriated Modern Use

Currently States The words spirit animal and totem are used in popular Western practice for a personal animal ally. Native scholars and communities object to both usages, on the ground that they take the vocabulary and the authority of particular Indigenous traditions and apply them to a generic and commercial practice.

Suzanne Owen's The Appropriation of Native American Spirituality (Continuum, 2008) documents the objection Indigenous communities in North America raise, ongoing and in the present tense, against the commercial "spirit animal" genre. Owen's study examines how the practice borrows specific Indigenous terms and claimed lineages, presenting them as licensing a service sold to outside customers, and sets that use against the communities' own accounts of what those terms and practices mean within their traditions. What is disputed, on Owen's reading, is not that people generally feel a kinship with animals, a widely attested feeling that belongs to no one tradition, but the specific commercial borrowing of Indigenous vocabulary and claimed authority. The atlas records the animal, records that the modern commercial practice exists, and records that this documented objection is made, without adjudicating between the parties.

Source The Appropriation of Native American Spirituality, Suzanne Owen tier 1

Bede, Figures

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Lifespan or Floruit Start Year

Currently States 673

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

Bede, Figures

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Lifespan or Floruit End Year

Currently States 735

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

Belenus, Deities

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Origin of the Name

Currently States Belenus's name has long been linked to the springtime Gaelic festival of Beltane.

Celticists treat the connection between the theonym Belenus and the festival name Beltane as attractive but not proven. The two words are not a straightforward match by regular sound change, and some linguists derive Beltane from an unrelated root for bright fire instead, so the link stays a live proposal rather than a settled etymology.

Source A Dictionary of Celtic Mythology, James MacKillop tier 2

Belgium, Countries

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Legal Status

Currently States The state funds the clergy of six recognised faiths, Catholicism, Protestantism, Anglicanism, Judaism, Islam and Orthodox Christianity, and grants equivalent funding to organised secular humanism as a non confessional philosophical community; ritual slaughter without stunning was banned in Flanders and Wallonia and upheld in 2020.

Belgium funds the clergy of six state-recognised religious communities, Catholicism, Protestantism, Anglicanism, Judaism, Islam and Orthodox Christianity, and extends equivalent public funding to organised secular humanism as a recognised non-confessional philosophical community. Separately, Flanders and Wallonia, Belgium's two main regions, banned ritual slaughter without prior stunning, a method required by both Jewish shechita and Islamic dhabiha practice, and the Belgian Constitutional Court upheld the bans in 2020 after Jewish and Muslim community organisations challenged them as violating religious freedom. The State Department's report documents both measures without resolving the tension: a state that funds religious and non-religious worldviews on an equal footing has, through regional legislation, restricted a ritual practice central to two of its recognised traditions. The bans were litigated up to the Belgian Constitutional Court and to the Court of Justice of the European Union, both of which upheld them in 2020; the communities affected continue to hold that this does not settle the underlying conflict between animal welfare regulation and religious practice.

Source International Religious Freedom Report, United States Department of State, Office of International Religious Freedom tier 1

Bellerophon, Figures

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Lineage

Currently States Raised as the son of Glaucus of Corinth

According To Ancient Greek Religion

Pseudo-Apollodorus's The Library records that some sources make the sea god Poseidon Bellerophon's true father, with his mother Eurynome's husband Glaucus standing as a stepfather rather than his blood father, a divine paternity claim of the kind Greek mythography commonly attaches to notable heroes; the ancient tradition as Apollodorus records it does not settle which parentage is original.

Source The Library (Bibliotheca), Pseudo-Apollodorus tier 1

Benin, Countries

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Religious Composition

Currently States Vodun is practiced by a substantial share of the population, estimated around 30-40% though widely blended with Christian or Muslim identification; Christian and Muslim communities also form large shares (Pew Research Center, Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020).

Benin's religious composition is difficult to state as clean percentages because of widespread dual practice, in which the same individual identifies with and observes Vodun, indigenous to Benin, and Christianity or Islam simultaneously rather than treating them as exclusive categories a survey can cleanly separate. Pew Research Center's 2010 to 2020 compilation estimates Vodun practice at roughly 30 to 40 per cent of the population while acknowledging this figure represents only the share for whom Vodun is the primary self-identification, with a further, harder to quantify share blending Vodun observance into a primary Christian or Muslim identification. The difficulty is structural rather than a gap in survey method: any classification scheme requiring one primary religious identification per respondent will undercount syncretic practice by design, and no revised survey wording proposed to date has resolved how to count someone who observes both traditions as primary.

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

Beowulf, Other Writings

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Era of Composition Start Year

Currently States 700

Scholars have never settled when Beowulf was composed. Proposals range from the early eighth century, contemporary with the poem's Anglo-Saxon Christian framing, to as late as the surviving manuscript itself around the year 1000, and arguments turn on linguistic dating, historical allusions and manuscript paleography that point in different directions. The span given here runs from the earliest seriously proposed composition date to the manuscript date.

Source Klaeber's Beowulf and the Fight at Finnsburg, fourth edition, R. D. Fulk, Robert E. Bjork and John D. Niles (eds.) tier 1

Beowulf, Other Writings

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Era of Composition End Year

Currently States 1000

Scholars have never settled when Beowulf was composed. Proposals range from the early eighth century, contemporary with the poem's Anglo-Saxon Christian framing, to as late as the surviving manuscript itself around the year 1000, and arguments turn on linguistic dating, historical allusions and manuscript paleography that point in different directions. The span given here runs from the earliest seriously proposed composition date to the manuscript date.

Source Klaeber's Beowulf and the Fight at Finnsburg, fourth edition, R. D. Fulk, Robert E. Bjork and John D. Niles (eds.) tier 1

Bernardino de Sahagún, Historical Figures

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Lifespan or Floruit Start Year

Currently States 1499

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

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

Bernardino de Sahagún, Historical Figures

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Lifespan or Floruit End Year

Currently States 1590

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

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

Bet (Ba) በ, Alphabet Letters

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Meaning in the Attesting Source

Currently States Why the script was vocalised in the fourth century CE, after centuries of writing consonants alone, is argued and not settled

According To The Ge'ez script

The World's Writing Systems (Peter T. Daniels and William Bright, eds., Oxford University Press, 1996) reviews the Aksumite inscriptions that first show Ge'ez written with vocalisation, a fourth-century CE innovation that is not in dispute, and canvasses three explanations for why it happened then: an internal development inside the Aksumite royal chancery seeking a more precise script for administration; a response to the newly Christian court's need for scripture translated and taught with unambiguous vowels after Aksum's conversion under King Ezana; and influence carried by vocalised Indian scripts reaching the Aksumite court through Red Sea trade contact. Comparing the timing, the epigraphic evidence and the trade record for each explanation, the volume's contributors find none conclusive, since Aksum's fourth-century contacts touched all three at once; the dating of the change is settled, its cause is not.

Source The World's Writing Systems, Peter T. Daniels and William Bright (eds.) tier 1

Beta ⲃ, Alphabet Letters

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Origin Period

Currently States Greek letters wrote Egyptian from about the first century CE, settled by the fourth

According To The Coptic alphabet of Christian Egypt

The World's Writing Systems (Peter T. Daniels and William Bright, eds., Oxford University Press, 1996) surveys the small corpus of Old Coptic texts, pre-Christian magical and astrological papyri in which Egyptian was first written out using Greek letters plus a few signs borrowed from Demotic, against the standardised Coptic used in Christian scripture translation from around the third century CE onward. Comparing the two corpora, its contributors find the evidence thin enough to support two readings: that the Old Coptic magical texts already fixed the practice of writing Egyptian in Greek-based letters, or that the Christian translation project, needing a stable and teachable orthography for scripture, was the decisive act that standardised the script that survives. Because both readings draw on the same handful of surviving texts and no source describes an official act of decision, the volume treats the question as open rather than favouring either camp.

Source The World's Writing Systems, Peter T. Daniels and William Bright (eds.) tier 1

Beta Israel, Denominations

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Origin Period

Currently States Documented as a distinct community from the fourteenth century, consolidated through conflict with the Solomonic monarchy into the sixteenth.

The community's own tradition traces descent from the tribe of Dan or from Menelik's returning retinue, and places its presence in Ethiopia far earlier. Kaplan and Quirin, publishing independently in 1992, both argued for emergence out of Agaw-speaking highland populations in the medieval period. That reading is now mainstream but does not settle where the Israelite practice originally came from.

Source The Evolution of the Ethiopian Jews: A History of the Beta Israel (Falasha) to 1920, James Quirin tier 1

Beta Israel Liturgical Chant, Sacred Sound

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Origin Period

Currently States The dating is contested. The liturgy's language and instruments are shared with Ethiopian Christian worship, which places at least its present form well inside the Ethiopian Christian era.

Shelemay reads the repertory as having formed inside Ethiopia in contact with Christian monasticism, and Kaplan reaches compatible conclusions about the community's institutions. The community's own account and a strand of earlier scholarship hold for ancient Israelite descent. Both camps argue from the same evidence.

Source Music, Ritual, and Falasha History, Kay Kaufman Shelemay tier 1

Beth ב, Alphabet Letters

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Origin Period

Currently States Scholem places Sefer Yetzirah between the second and sixth century CE

According To Sefer Yetzirah: the thirty-two paths and the twenty-two letters

Gershom Scholem's Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (Schocken Books, New York, 1961) surveys the manuscript recensions of Sefer Yetzirah and finds no single stable text: the surviving copies diverge enough in wording and in the letter-to-planet and letter-to-sign correspondences that quoting "the text" requires naming which recension is meant. Comparing the linguistic style, the doctrinal content and the external references made to the work across centuries of citation, Scholem argues the book could have been composed anywhere from the second to the ninth century CE, a span of roughly a millennium, with later Kabbalistic and Hasidic writers each reading it through their own era's overlay. The atlas follows Scholem's range rather than a narrower guess, and does not print the per-letter planet and sign tables at all, because doing so would silently pick one contested recension over the others.

Source Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, Gershom Scholem tier 1

Beth ב, Alphabet Letters

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Origin Period

Currently States Survives in three recensions that do not agree in detail

According To Sefer Yetzirah: the thirty-two paths and the twenty-two letters

Gershom Scholem's Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (Schocken Books, New York, 1961) surveys the manuscript recensions of Sefer Yetzirah and finds no single stable text: the surviving copies diverge enough in wording and in the letter-to-planet and letter-to-sign correspondences that quoting "the text" requires naming which recension is meant. Comparing the linguistic style, the doctrinal content and the external references made to the work across centuries of citation, Scholem argues the book could have been composed anywhere from the second to the ninth century CE, a span of roughly a millennium, with later Kabbalistic and Hasidic writers each reading it through their own era's overlay. The atlas follows Scholem's range rather than a narrower guess, and does not print the per-letter planet and sign tables at all, because doing so would silently pick one contested recension over the others.

Source Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, Gershom Scholem tier 1

Bhabbha ਭ, Alphabet Letters

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Origin Period

Currently States Sikh tradition credits Guru Angad, the second Guru, with giving the script its settled form in the sixteenth century

According To The Gurmukhi script

Two reference works give incompatible accounts. The Encyclopaedia of Sikhism (Harbans Singh, editor-in-chief, Punjabi University, Patiala, 1998) carries the Sikh tradition that Guru Angad, the second Guru (1504-1552), devised the script. The World's Writing Systems (Peter T. Daniels and William Bright, eds., Oxford University Press, 1996), surveying the paleography of Indic scripts, holds instead that the letterforms were already in mercantile use in the Punjab as one of the Landa scripts descended from Sharada, and that comparing those existing Landa forms against the Gurmukhi letters attested from Guru Angad's era shows a fixing and standardising of a repertoire already in circulation rather than an invention from nothing. Neither side has displaced the other because the two accounts read different kinds of evidence, a community's own historical memory against a comparative script lineage, and the atlas records both without adjudicating.

Source The Encyclopaedia of Sikhism, Harbans Singh (editor-in-chief) tier 2