Open Questions

Open Expiation and Propitiation

Why It Is Open The group carries two histories. In Greek outside the Bible it means placating a person; in the Septuagint it renders the Hebrew kipper, whose objects are sins, persons and holy places rather than God. C. H. Dodd argued from the second, Leon Morris from the presence of wrath in the argument of Romans, and neither case has displaced the other. English versions have chosen differently in each generation, and the choice usually follows the doctrine already held.

What Would Settle It A lexical study covering the whole hilask- group across the Septuagint, the Jewish Greek literature outside it and the papyri, treating the New Testament occurrences last rather than first. The question is whether the Septuagint usage displaced the ordinary Greek sense for these writers or merely sat beside it.

Expertise Needed Septuagint studies; New Testament lexicography; Hellenistic Greek philology

Question posed in The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised edition, F. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.).

Open Kapparah

Why It Is Open Scholars of the Hebrew Bible hold opposing readings of the same texts. A strong modern position takes the chatat as purging the sanctuary of accumulated impurity, with the animal never described as punished; older readings take covering as the governing sense of kipper and read a transfer. The answer bears directly on whether the Christian atonement theories may argue from these rites the way several of them do.

What Would Settle It Close philological work on the objects and prepositions the verb kipper takes across the whole priestly corpus, read alongside comparative material from neighbouring ritual systems, rather than through the categories of later theology.

Expertise Needed Hebrew Bible philology; the study of priestly ritual; comparative ancient Near Eastern religion

Question posed in Encyclopedia of Religion, Mircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.).

Open Nine worlds

Why It Is Open The Eddas refer to nine worlds without ever enumerating them in one place. The lists that circulate today are modern reconstructions assembled from names scattered across the Poetic and Prose Eddas, not a set any medieval text sets out as such.

What Would Settle It A systematic philological collation of every Old Norse cosmological realm named in the Poetic Edda (Voluspa, Grimnismal, Vafthrudnismal among them) and the Prose Edda, checked for internal consistency, by an Old Norse philologist.

Expertise Needed Old Norse philology

Question posed in Encyclopedia of Religion, Mircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.), art. Germanic Religion.

Open Thealogy

Why It Is Open The word is variously credited to different writers of the 1970s and this pass could not establish a first attested use from a source it had checked. Goldenberg's use in 1979 is documented; earlier uses are asserted in secondary literature without a locus.

What Would Settle It A first-attestation search across feminist religious periodicals and conference papers of the 1970s, giving a dated printed occurrence with page reference.

Expertise Needed History of religions; lexicography

Question posed in Divinity Atlas Open Questions Register, First Edition.

Open Chet, Avon and Pesha

Why It Is Open The three terms stand together in Leviticus 16 and Exodus 34 without any definition attached, and the graded reading is supplied by rabbinic literature centuries afterwards. Whether biblical Hebrew already distinguishes the three roots this way, or whether the distinction is a rabbinic construction laid over a rhetorical triplet, is a question of lexical semantics that this entry did not attempt to settle.

What Would Settle It A corpus study of every occurrence of the three roots in the Hebrew Bible, read alongside the Northwest Semitic epigraphic material, testing whether the intention grading holds independently of the rabbinic gloss.

Expertise Needed Biblical Hebrew lexicography; Northwest Semitic philology

Question posed in Divinity Atlas Open Questions Register, First Edition.

Open Kaba'ir and Sagha'ir

Why It Is Open The manual is standardly cited under the name of Shams al-Din al-Dhahabi and is one of the most reproduced texts on the subject, but the attribution has been questioned, and this entry could not settle it from the sources available to it. The entry therefore describes the work without asserting authorship.

What Would Settle It A manuscript study of the earliest surviving copies and their transmission chains, compared against al-Dhahabi's securely attributed writings for method, vocabulary and the authorities he cites.

Expertise Needed Arabic manuscript studies; Islamic intellectual history

Question posed in Divinity Atlas Open Questions Register, First Edition.

Open Sin as Illness in Orthodox Theology

Why It Is Open Twentieth century Orthodox theology drew the contrast strongly and rested a great deal of it on the reading of a single clause of Romans 5:12. Other scholars hold the difference is overdrawn, and that Greek writers do at times speak of an inherited culpability. Both positions are held now, and the atlas carries the fact as debated rather than choosing between them.

What Would Settle It A systematic survey of the Greek patristic corpus for language of inherited culpability, conducted independently of the Romans 5:12 reading, with the Latin material read on the same terms and by the same criteria.

Expertise Needed Patristics; historical theology

Question posed in Divinity Atlas Open Questions Register, First Edition.

Open The Way International

Why It Is Open The Way International is registered as a church under US tax law and is therefore exempt from filing the Form 990 annual return that discloses a tax-exempt organization's finances; ProPublica's Nonprofit Explorer confirms none is on record. A private data aggregator's revenue estimate circulates but names no methodology or analyst, so no reliable total was found.

What Would Settle It A voluntary published financial statement from The Way International itself, or investigative journalism that obtains and verifies its actual revenue or asset figures despite the church exemption.

Expertise Needed US nonprofit and religious organization tax law, and investigative journalism covering new religious movements.

Question posed in Way International, Organization Profile (ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer).

Open Twelve Tribes

Why It Is Open Twelve Tribes operates roughly 40 largely self-governing communities internationally with no found central financial disclosure; only a single town's property assessment, Plymouth, Massachusetts at more than 7 million dollars, was located, which describes one community's holdings rather than the movement's total.

What Would Settle It A consolidated accounting, whether voluntary or produced by investigative journalism, of Twelve Tribes' property and business holdings, including its Yellow Deli restaurant chain, across all of its international communities.

Expertise Needed New religious movement studies and communal economics, and investigative journalism covering Twelve Tribes' individual communities.

Question posed in My Time with the Twelve Tribes (Plymouth Independent, 2026), Lucia Thomas.

Open NXIVM

Why It Is Open NXIVM operated as a for-profit company rather than an audited nonprofit, and its collapse proceeded through a criminal racketeering prosecution that produced restitution to named individual victims and forfeitures by named individual defendants, Keith Raniere and Clare Bronfman among them, rather than a receivership or audit of the organization's own combined assets.

What Would Settle It A receiver's accounting, bankruptcy filing, or investigative reporting that totals NXIVM's corporate assets, real estate holdings and revenue as a single organization, distinct from the personal restitution and forfeiture figures tied to individual defendants.

Expertise Needed Corporate and criminal law concerning multi-level marketing and racketeering prosecutions, and investigative journalism covering NXIVM's business structure.

Question posed in Keith Raniere Ordered to Pay 3.5 Million Dollars in Restitution (Associated Press via Global News, 2021), Tom Hays.

Open Word of Faith Fellowship

Why It Is Open Word of Faith Fellowship is organized and recognized by the IRS as a church, a category exempt from the Form 990 filing that would otherwise make its finances checkable, and it has never published its own financial account. The only dollar figures the public record holds are a fraudulent unemployment claims total tied to individual members and a federal investigation into alleged abuse, neither a statement of the church's own assets or revenue.

What Would Settle It A voluntary financial disclosure, a court-ordered accounting from a future civil or criminal proceeding, or investigative journalism that totals the church's property, cash holdings and revenue as an organization, distinct from the individual-level fraud figures already on record.

Expertise Needed Nonprofit and tax law concerning church filing exemptions, and investigative journalism covering Word of Faith Fellowship's internal finances.

Question posed in Word Of Faith Fellowship Inc, Organization Record (ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer).

Open The Family International

Why It Is Open The Family International restructured in 2010 into a decentralized, largely non-communal network of individual members and associated organizations across many countries, has historically discouraged outside employment, and by a named scholarly account has never been wealthy as an organization; it has never published a single consolidated financial statement covering that network.

What Would Settle It A consolidated financial statement, investigative accounting or scholarly financial study totaling assets, property and revenue across The Family International's associated national entities and organizations, rather than the qualitative account of financial constraint currently on record.

Expertise Needed Sociology of religion and investigative journalism covering new religious movements' financial structures and cross-border nonprofit networks.

Question posed in Children of God / The Family International (CDAMM, 2021), Eileen Barker and Sarah Harvey.

Open Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God

Why It Is Open The commonly cited figure of about 778 dead is assembled from counts taken at the Kanungu church and several satellite grave sites, not from an identified register, and the victims at the satellite sites were killed over a period of months before the fire. Credonia Mwerinde and Joseph Kibwetere were sought and never produced. The Ugandan investigation was not completed, the remains were never comprehensively examined, and no identification exercise was carried out, so the total and the fate of the leadership are both unresolved rather than disputed.

What Would Settle It Forensic examination and DNA identification of the remains recovered from the Kanungu site and the satellite graves, matched against surviving relatives, together with release of the Ugandan police investigation file and the 2000 post-mortem records.

Expertise Needed Forensic anthropology and forensic genetics; Ugandan criminal records and archival research; history of religion in East Africa.

Question posed in World Religions and Spirituality Project, David G. Bromley (founding director) and the profile authors of record.

Open Church of Scientology

Why It Is Open Accounts of a 2007 decision of the Audiencia Nacional are consistent with one another but every readable one traces back either to the organisation's own publications or to aggregators repeating them. The judgment itself was not obtained during this run, so the claim was kept out of the entry rather than asserted on that footing.

What Would Settle It The text of the judgment from the Spanish judicial documentation service, or the registry entry from the Ministry of Justice, either of which would fix the court, the date and what was actually ordered.

Expertise Needed Law (Spanish administrative and ecclesiastical law)

Question posed in Divinity Atlas Open Questions Register, First Edition.

Open Church of Scientology

Why It Is Open Two dates circulate for the same event, September 2007 and November 2007, and the sources carrying them are the organisation's own material and secondary summaries. The registration number quoted in those accounts was not checked against the Portuguese register.

What Would Settle It The entry in the Portuguese register of collective religious entities, or the United States Department of State International Religious Freedom report for Portugal read in full rather than in summary.

Expertise Needed Law (Portuguese religious registration under the 2001 Religious Freedom Act)

Question posed in Divinity Atlas Open Questions Register, First Edition.

Open Church of Scientology

Why It Is Open The closing agreement was not published by the agency and its reasoning has never been set out on the public record. Reporting in 1997 raised the question of how the reversal came about without settling it, and the agreement's own terms were reported rather than officially released.

What Would Settle It Release of the agency's internal deliberative record, or a completed freedom of information action producing the file behind the decision rather than the agreement alone.

Expertise Needed Tax law and administrative history

Question posed in Scientologists' Deal With IRS: $12.5 Million, The Seattle Times.

Open Church of Scientology

Why It Is Open The announcement was made at federal level and concerned listing as a standalone nationwide intelligence target. Several German states ran their own observation from 1997 and their current position was not established by this run.

What Would Settle It The current annual reports of the state offices for the protection of the constitution, in particular those states that began observation in 1997, or a statement from the interior ministries of those states.

Expertise Needed Law and public administration (Germany)

Question posed in Germany Ends Decades-Long Surveillance of the Church of Scientology, KTLA.

Open Angel Prayers Oracle Cards

Why It Is Open No illustrator is credited on the creator's own product page, the publisher's listing, or any retailer listing checked. Kyle Gray's later decks in this registry, credited to a named illustrator, make the silence here look like an omission rather than a genuinely uncredited work, but that could not be confirmed either way.

What Would Settle It The deck's own guidebook or box, examined directly, or a publisher catalogue record naming the illustrator.

Expertise Needed Publishing history

Question posed in Angel Prayers Oracle Cards (astrologyandangelmediums.com review, citing Hay House edition), Kyle Gray.

Open Angel Therapy Oracle Cards

Why It Is Open Multiple independent reviews describe this deck's artwork as compiled from several different artists rather than one credited illustrator, and no source checked, the publisher's own listing or Aeclectic Tarot's review among them, names any of the contributors for this specific title.

What Would Settle It The deck's own guidebook, examined directly, since compiled-artwork Hay House oracle decks typically credit each contributor inside the booklet even when retailer listings do not.

Expertise Needed Publishing history

Question posed in Angel Therapy Oracle Cards, A 44-Card Deck and Guidebook (Amazon listing), Doreen Virtue.

Open Archangel Oracle Cards

Why It Is Open Multiple independent reviews describe this deck's artwork as compiled from several different artists rather than one credited illustrator, and Aeclectic Tarot's own review, read directly, describes the card layout without naming an artist. No source checked names a contributor for this specific title.

What Would Settle It The deck's own guidebook, examined directly, since compiled-artwork Hay House oracle decks typically credit each contributor inside the booklet even when retailer listings do not.

Expertise Needed Publishing history

Question posed in Archangel Oracle Cards, A 45 Card Deck and Guidebook (Amazon listing), Doreen Virtue.