Disputed Statements

Anglicanism, Denominations

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Adherents Today Maximum

Currently States 110000000.000000

Estimates range from roughly 80 million, close to Pew Research's dedicated 2008 estimate and a commonly cited Anglican Communion figure, up to 100-110 million in broader countings that include every denomination within the wider Anglican tradition. There is no single official worldwide census.

Source Global Anglicanism at a Crossroads (Pew Research Center, 2008), Pew Research Center tier 1

Angra Mainyu, Deities

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Point in Dispute

Currently States Whether Angra Mainyu is co-eternal with Ahura Mazda as an independent opposing principle, or a lesser being whose choice of evil makes him its source, the question the Zurvanite school answered by making both spirits offspring of a god of time.

Zoroastrian theology itself divided historically on whether Angra Mainyu is co-eternal with Ahura Mazda, opposed to him from the beginning as two independent principles, or a lesser being who chooses evil and so becomes its source, a question the later Zurvanite school answered by making both spirits offspring of a prior god of time, Zurvan, a resolution the older Gathic tradition never taught and that mainstream Zoroastrianism rejected.

Source A History of Zoroastrianism, Mary Boyce tier 1

Anishinaabe Religion, Religions

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Supreme Being

Currently States Gichi-Manidoo, the great manidoo. Whether a supreme being in this sense is pre-contact or took shape in translation is disputed.

Two camps. One reads Gichi-Manidoo as an indigenous concept of a highest power, present before missionary contact and recorded early. The other reads the singular supreme being as a product of translation practice: missionaries needed an equivalent for God, seized on manidoo, and the superlative form hardened into a monotheist-shaped figure that the earlier usage did not support, where manidoo named a quality of power distributed across many beings. The evidence is contested because the earliest records are themselves missionary.

Source The Manitous: The Spiritual World of the Ojibway, Basil Johnston tier 1

Anna Göldi, Historical Figures

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns How Its Legacy Is Contested

Currently States Usually described as the last person executed for witchcraft in Europe.

Wolfgang Behringer's Witches and Witch-Hunts: A Global History (Polity Press, 2004) surveys how historians have applied the label Europe's last witch execution to Anna Goldi's 1782 case, and finds the disagreement turns on definition rather than on any new evidence about the case itself. Behringer's comparative method, reading Goldi's trial record against the wider European record of witchcraft prosecutions, sets out three positions: one that counts her because the substance of the accusation was witchcraft whatever the formal charge sheet said, one that excludes her because she was tried and condemned specifically for poisoning, and one that points to later, more thinly documented killings in eastern Europe and holds no last case can responsibly be named at all. The atlas follows Behringer in recording the claim without adjudicating between the three readings.

Source Witches and Witch-Hunts: A Global History, Wolfgang Behringer tier 1

Antiochus IV, Historical Figures

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Lifespan or Floruit Start Year

Currently States -215

Classical reference works give his birth as around 215 BCE; no Seleucid record fixes it precisely, so the figure is the conventional scholarly estimate rather than a dated record. It is worked out chiefly from his known presence as a hostage in Rome after the Peace of Apamea in the 180s BCE and from the ages implied by the reigns of his brothers Seleucus IV and the elder Antiochus, not from any birth record of his own.

Source The Oxford Classical Dictionary, 4th edition, Simon Hornblower, Antony Spawforth and Esther Eidinow (eds.) tier 1

Antoine Court de Gebelin, Historical Figures

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Lifespan or Floruit Start Year

Currently States 1725

Encyclopaedia Britannica gives his birth as January 25, 1725, in Nimes; an older biographical tradition instead gives 1724 or 1728, so the exact year is not settled even though the decade and place are.

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

Antwerp, Cities

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Origin of the Name

Currently States Popularly explained by a folk legend of the giant Antigoon, defeated by the Roman soldier Silvius Brabo, who cut off the giant's hand and threw it into the river Scheldt, reflected in the two severed hands on Antwerp's coat of arms; philologists instead derive the name from 'aanwerp', a mound of land deposited at a river bend. No single account is settled.

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

Anubis, Figures

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Lineage

Currently States Old Kingdom sources name him son of Ra; the Coffin Texts of the First Intermediate Period instead name Hesat or Bastet as his mother; the later, better known tradition recorded by Plutarch makes him the secret son of Osiris and Nephthys, adopted and raised by Isis as her own.

Egyptian sources disagree by period rather than by a single evolving story: Old Kingdom tradition makes Anubis son of Ra, the Coffin Texts name Hesat or Bastet as his mother, and the later Osirian tradition Plutarch records makes him the illegitimate son of Osiris and Nephthys. Nothing in the corpus reconciles the three.

Source The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt, Donald B. Redford (ed.) tier 1

Anunnaki, Mythical Creatures

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Point in Dispute

Currently States Whether Anunna and Igigi named two fixed and separate classes of gods, or two overlapping terms whose senses shifted and in places exchanged places between periods

The usage is genuinely inconsistent across the record. Some readings treat the two as a stable pair of ranks, senior and junior; others hold that the terms overlap in the earlier material and only separate, and then invert, in the later.

Source Gods, Demons and Symbols of Ancient Mesopotamia: An Illustrated Dictionary, Jeremy Black and Anthony Green tier 2

Ap ࡐ, Alphabet Letters

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns A Rival System's Attribution

Currently States The script's ancestry is assigned either to a cursive form of Aramaic, the derivation favored by most script historians, or to the Parthian chancery script used in Sasanian era administrative documents.

According To The Mandaic script

Both derivations are held in the literature and neither has displaced the other. The Aramaic cursive camp points to the letterforms' overall resemblance to other late Aramaic cursive scripts of the region, including Nabataean and Syriac; the Parthian chancery camp points to specific letterforms, including certain medial and final forms, that resemble Pahlavi documentary hands more closely than any Aramaic cursive exemplar. No single find has settled the question, and Mandaic paleography treats it as open pending further comparative work.

Source Iranian Scripts for Aramaic Languages: The Origin of the Mandaic Script, Charles G. Haberl tier 1

Aparigraha (Non-Greed), Virtues

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Attributed Author / Compiler

Currently States Traditionally attributed to Patanjali, the compiler of the Yoga Sutras. Scholarship debates whether this is the same Patanjali credited with the Sanskrit grammatical treatise of that name, and whether the text as it stands is the work of a single author or an edited compilation of older material.

Source The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali: A New Edition, Translation, and Commentary, Edwin F. Bryant tier 1

Aparigraha (Non-Greed), Virtues

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Origin Period

Currently States Dated by scholars anywhere from the second century BCE, on older assumptions of a single ancient author, to as late as the fourth or fifth century CE, on newer philological readings that treat the text as a later compilation. There is no scholarly consensus on a single date for the Yoga Sutras.

Source The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali: A New Edition, Translation, and Commentary, Edwin F. Bryant tier 1

Aparigraha (Non-Possession), Virtues

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Origin Period

Currently States The five mahavratas as a codified set of ascetic vows appear already in the Acaranga Sutra, among the oldest surviving Jain Agamas, with aparigraha named fifth, though the canon's traditional final redaction at the Council of Valabhi is placed in the fifth century CE, leaving how much of the text predates that redaction unsettled. Their classical formal definition is fixed later in Umasvati's Tattvartha Sutra, a text scholars date anywhere from the second to the fifth century CE.

Source The Jaina Path of Purification, Padmanabh S. Jaini tier 1

Aphrodite, Figures

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Lineage

Currently States By Hesiod's account in the Theogony, born motherless from the sea foam produced when the severed genitals of Uranus fell into the sea; Homer's Iliad instead names her daughter of Zeus and the goddess Dione.

Hesiod (Theogony) and Homer (Iliad) give genuinely different ancient accounts of her origin, not a single story told two ways: Hesiod makes her motherless and born of the sea, Homer makes her the daughter of Zeus and Dione.

Source Theogony, Hesiod tier 1

Apocalypto (2006 Film), Screen Works

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Religious Subject Matter

Currently States Depicts a Maya city's priesthood performing sacrifice before a large audience amid a solar eclipse, a warrior culture raiding villages for captives, and a civilization the film frames as collapsing partly under its own environmental strain, deforestation and soil exhaustion among the pressures shown. The film is set in the Late Postclassic period, shortly before Spanish contact, and its Maya characters speak Yucatec Maya throughout.

Archaeologists Lisa Lucero and David Webster, quoted in a USA Today article, and Zachary Hruby, quoted in National Geographic, argued the film's scale of sacrifice, its raiding for captives and its compressed timeline more closely resemble Aztec practice or conflate periods roughly four hundred years apart than they reflect documented Maya history. Mesoweb's own analysis, written by Maya specialists answering that critique directly, holds that the film's chosen setting, the Late Postclassic rather than the Classic period, is one where mass sacrifice and the Yucatec language are in fact both documented, so the criticism rests on a period the film never claims to depict. The disagreement is unresolved between the two camps as documented.

Source Lovgren, National Geographic, "Apocalypto Tortures the Facts, Expert Says," 2006, Stefan Lovgren tier 2

Apollo, Deities

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Origin of the Name

Currently States The etymology of the name Apollo is genuinely unsettled among classicists. Proposals include a Doric root tied to apella, a tribal assembly, an origin in the Hittite god Appaliunas invoked in a Bronze Age treaty, and a derivation from a word for destruction reflecting his role as a plague sending archer in the Iliad. No single reading commands consensus, and the Oxford Classical Dictionary treats the question as open.

Source The Oxford Classical Dictionary, 4th edition, Simon Hornblower, Antony Spawforth and Esther Eidinow (eds.) tier 1

Apostles' Creed, Creeds & Confessions

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Origin Period Start Year

Currently States 750

Historians differ on which stage of the creed's growth counts as its origin. Its earliest ancestor, the Old Roman Symbol, is recorded separately in this atlas at around 150. The wording now called the Apostles' Creed, its received text, is not fully attested until a document associated with Priminius, written around 710 to 750. 750 is recorded here for the developed text this entry describes, not for its older ancestor.

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

Apple, Plants

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Origin of the Name

Currently States From Old English aeppel, a widely attested ancient Germanic word whose deeper Indo-European root is not settled among linguists.

According To Herbals: Their Origin and Evolution

Aeppel is securely Germanic and shared across the old Germanic languages, but historical linguists disagree on its ultimate Indo-European root: proposals connect it to words for fruit generally, to a place name, or to no securely reconstructible ancestor at all, so no single derivation beyond Germanic is treated as settled here.

Source Herbals: Their Origin and Evolution: A Chapter in the History of Botany, 1470-1670, Agnes Arber tier 1

April, Months of the Year

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Origin of the Name

Currently States Contested since antiquity: Varro derived Aprilis from aperire, to open, for the opening buds of spring, while Ovid derived it from Aphrodite and gave the month to Venus; modern scholarship adds the Etruscan Apru

Two derivations were current in antiquity itself, Varro's aperire against Ovid's Aphrodite, and modern philology adds an Etruscan candidate without settling the question.

Source The Oxford Companion to the Year: An Exploration of Calendar Customs and Time-Reckoning, Bonnie Blackburn and Leofranc Holford-Strevens tier 1

Apuleius, Historical Figures

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Lifespan or Floruit Start Year

Currently States 124

No ancient source states Apuleius's exact birth year. Historians of Roman literature cite around 124 CE as the conventional estimate, derived from references within his own Apologia to his age and career stage at the time of his trial, rather than from a direct record.

Source Apuleius (reference article), Wikipedia contributors tier 3