Open Questions

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 Sikh-Mughal Wars

Why It Is Open J.S. Grewal's standard modern history of the Sikhs, and other accessible surveys of the conflict, record casualty figures for individual battles and massacres, tens of thousands at the Battle of Bhilowal, thousands at Chhota Ghallughara, hundreds at the siege of Gurdaspur, but none totals them into a single figure for the roughly ninety year conflict, and no comprehensive scholarly count was located. A figure is never invented to fill that gap.

What Would Settle It A scholarly synthesis totaling documented losses across the conflict's 1621 to 1715 span, or a demographic study of Punjab's population comparable to the census based methods used for other early modern wars. No such synthesis was located across the standard modern histories of the conflict.

Expertise Needed Military and demographic history of Mughal India and early Sikh Punjab.

Question posed in J.S. Grewal, The Sikhs of the Punjab (New Cambridge History of India II.3), J. S. Grewal.

Open Second Punic War

Why It Is Open Adrian Goldsworthy's scholarly history of the Punic Wars, and the ancient accounts of Polybius and Livy it draws on, record casualty figures for individual battles, roughly 15,000 Roman dead at Trebia, 15,000 at Lake Trasimene, and a toll near 50,000 at Cannae, alongside modern demographic reconstructions of the Roman citizen census, which fell from 273,000 in 225 BC toward roughly half that within the war's first decade. None of these totals a single figure for combat and civilian deaths on both sides across the full seventeen year war, and no comprehensive scholarly count was located.

What Would Settle It A scholarly synthesis totaling documented losses across the war's Italian, Spanish, Sicilian and African theaters, or a demographic study using the Roman citizen census figures to derive a total including allied Italian troops, Carthaginian forces and civilians, comparable to the census based methods used for other wars this atlas records. No such synthesis was located across the standard modern histories of the conflict.

Expertise Needed Roman republican military and demographic history.

Question posed in The Fall of Carthage: The Punic Wars 265-146 BC, Adrian Goldsworthy.

Open The Greco-Persian Wars

Why It Is Open Herodotus's Histories records casualty figures for individual engagements, Marathon, Thermopylae, Salamis, Plataea and Mycale among them, but modern scholars regard many of the ancient figures, including the size of the Persian invasion force itself, as unreliable and often inflated. No modern scholarly synthesis was located that totals deaths across the wars' span into a single figure; scholarship instead discusses each battle's own contested numbers on its own terms.

What Would Settle It A modern scholarly total built from revised, rather than Herodotus's own, troop and casualty figures across the wars' major engagements, or a demographic study of Achaemenid and Greek population loss over the conflict. No such synthesis was located.

Expertise Needed Ancient Greek and Achaemenid Persian military history.

Question posed in Histories, Herodotus.

Open Hundred Years War

Why It Is Open Jonathan Sumption's multi volume scholarly history covers the war's campaigns in detail, and named battle losses are documented, thousands of French dead at Crecy, Poitiers and Agincourt among them, but no historian's synthesis totals combat deaths together with the compounding effects of famine and the Black Death across the war's hundred and sixteen year span into one figure. Totals near two to three million, or as high as five million, circulate widely but trace to popular compilations rather than a named historian's stated methodology.

What Would Settle It A named historian's stated total distinguishing direct battle deaths from indirect famine and plague mortality across the war's full span, comparable to the demographic methods used for other wars this atlas records. No such study was located; only unattributed aggregator totals circulate.

Expertise Needed Late medieval English and French military and demographic history.

Question posed in The Hundred Years War, Volume I: Trial by Battle, Jonathan Sumption.

Open Guruvayur

Why It Is Open A Kerala High Court division bench found in July 2026 that Guruvayur Devaswom's annual accounts for the 2023-24, 2024-25 and 2025-26 financial years had not been finalized or filed for statutory audit, that no physical verification of its gold and silver offerings had occurred in 43 years, and that auditors had been denied the digital access needed to check its online transactions, so no current total income or revenue figure for the Devaswom could be confirmed.

What Would Settle It The finalized, audited annual accounts of Guruvayur Devaswom for 2023-24, 2024-25 and 2025-26, once filed and made public in compliance with the Kerala High Court's July 2026 order, or independent reporting that reads them once they exist.

Expertise Needed Kerala Devaswom administration and public finance, and investigative or legal journalism covering religious endowment governance in Kerala.

Question posed in Kerala High Court Issues Directions To Strengthen Audit, Financial Transparency In Guruvayur Devaswom (LiveLaw, 2026), K. Salma Jennath.

Open Meenakshi Amman Temple

Why It Is Open Tamil Nadu's HR&CE Department administers the Meenakshi Amman Temple's finances but has not been found to publish a standing per-temple annual account for it; the state's own Comptroller and Auditor General reported in December 2024 that the department withheld the documents needed to verify temple revenue, and a Madras High Court order in September 2025 had to compel the department to produce the temple's own revenue and property details, which were not already public.

What Would Settle It A published per-temple annual account from Tamil Nadu's HR&CE Department for the Meenakshi Amman Temple specifically, or the department's compliance with the Madras High Court's September 2025 disclosure order once it is filed and made public.

Expertise Needed Tamil Nadu temple administration and public finance, and legal or investigative journalism covering HR&CE governance.

Question posed in Madras High Court Seeks Full Details of Meenakshi Temple Properties, Revenue and Encroachments (LawBeat, 2025), Salil Tiwari.

Open Ranganathaswamy Temple, Srirangam

Why It Is Open Tamil Nadu's HR&CE Department administers the Ranganathaswamy Temple at Srirangam's finances but has not been found to publish a standing per-temple annual account for it, and the state's own Comptroller and Auditor General reported in December 2024 that the department withheld the documents needed to verify temple revenue across its properties generally.

What Would Settle It A published per-temple annual account from Tamil Nadu's HR&CE Department for the Ranganathaswamy Temple specifically, naming its own audited revenue apart from the department's consolidated figures.

Expertise Needed Tamil Nadu temple administration and public finance, and legal or investigative journalism covering HR&CE governance.

Question posed in Tamil Nadu: CAG Slams HR&CE Department for Non-Cooperation in Temple Assets Audit (Organiser, 2024), TS Venkatesan.

Open Brihadishvara Temple

Why It Is Open Tamil Nadu's HR&CE Department administers the Brihadishvara Temple's finances but has not been found to publish a standing per-temple annual account for it, and the state's own Comptroller and Auditor General reported in December 2024 that the department withheld the documents needed to verify temple revenue across its properties generally.

What Would Settle It A published per-temple annual account from Tamil Nadu's HR&CE Department for the Brihadishvara Temple specifically, naming its own audited revenue apart from the department's consolidated figures.

Expertise Needed Tamil Nadu temple administration and public finance, and legal or investigative journalism covering HR&CE governance.

Question posed in Tamil Nadu: CAG Slams HR&CE Department for Non-Cooperation in Temple Assets Audit (Organiser, 2024), TS Venkatesan.

Open Ise Grand Shrine

Why It Is Open Japan's Religious Corporations Law exempts income associated with worship from both taxation and standing financial disclosure, and Shinto shrines including Ise Grand Shrine generally do not publish their offering income; the only widely reported figure, about 57 billion yen, is a one-time capital fundraising total for the shrine's periodic rebuilding, not an annual income or budget figure.

What Would Settle It A change in Japanese religious corporation disclosure requirements, or a voluntary published account from the Jingu Administration Office naming Ise Grand Shrine's own annual offering income or operating budget.

Expertise Needed Japanese religious corporation law and Shinto shrine administration, and financial or investigative journalism covering Japan's religious institutions.

Question posed in Shrine Funds: Japan's Religious Sites and Their Undisclosed Cash (Japan Times via Green Shinto, 2018), Philip Brasor and Masako Tsubuku.

Open Meiji Shrine

Why It Is Open The only widely circulated figure for Meiji Shrine, an estimated 1.3 billion yen over the three-day New Year holiday, comes from an outside estimator rather than the shrine's own published accounts and covers only that three-day window; Japan's Religious Corporations Law exempts worship-related income from the disclosure that would otherwise make a fuller, annual figure available.

What Would Settle It A voluntary published account from Meiji Shrine's own administration naming its annual offering income or operating budget, or a change in Japanese religious corporation disclosure requirements.

Expertise Needed Japanese religious corporation law and Shinto shrine administration, and financial or investigative journalism covering Japan's religious institutions.

Question posed in Shrine Funds: Japan's Religious Sites and Their Undisclosed Cash (Japan Times via Green Shinto, 2018), Philip Brasor and Masako Tsubuku.

Open Yasukuni Shrine

Why It Is Open Japan's Religious Corporations Law exempts income associated with worship from taxation and standing financial disclosure, and no figure for Yasukuni Shrine's own annual income or operating budget was located despite the shrine's unusual level of political and journalistic scrutiny on other matters.

What Would Settle It A voluntary published account from Yasukuni Shrine's own administration naming its annual offering income or operating budget, or investigative reporting that obtains one despite the general non-disclosure norm.

Expertise Needed Japanese religious corporation law and Shinto shrine administration, and investigative or political journalism covering Yasukuni Shrine specifically.

Question posed in Shrine Funds: Japan's Religious Sites and Their Undisclosed Cash (Japan Times via Green Shinto, 2018), Philip Brasor and Masako Tsubuku.

Open The First Fitna

Why It Is Open The Battle of Siffin and the Battle of the Camel are both remembered with specific traditional casualty figures, commonly around seventy thousand combined at Siffin alone, but those figures trace only to medieval chronicle compilations, chiefly al-Tabari drawing on Abu Mikhnaf, written under later dynasties with their own interest in the outcome. No modern historian has produced an independent whole-conflict synthesis to check them against.

What Would Settle It A modern historian's critical, source-by-source reassessment of the casualty claims in al-Tabari and the other early narrative sources, of the kind Bar Kokhba and the Sikh-Mughal Wars have each already received on this atlas, weighing the chronicles' reliability rather than repeating their totals.

Expertise Needed Early Islamic history; source criticism of the classical Arabic chronicle tradition

Question posed in The Succession to Muhammad: A Study of the Early Caliphate, Wilferd Madelung.

Open The Destruction of the Second Temple

Why It Is Open Josephus claims 1.1 million dead over the course of the siege; Tacitus gives six hundred thousand. Menahem Stern's standard critical edition of the classical sources treats Tacitus's figure, and by extension Josephus's higher one, as rhetorical rather than reliable, and proposes no replacement. No modern historian has converted demographic or archaeological evidence into a defensible death toll for the siege itself.

What Would Settle It A published demographic or archaeological reassessment of the siege's casualties, of the kind Raviv and Ben David produced for the Bar Kokhba War from settlement-survey evidence, applied to first-century Jerusalem's population and the siege's own documented timeline.

Expertise Needed Roman-period Judaean history; historical demography; classical source criticism

Question posed in Menahem Stern, Greek and Latin Authors on Jews and Judaism, Volume Two: From Tacitus to Simplicius (1980), Menahem Stern.

Open The Raid on Somnath in 1026

Why It Is Open Turko-Persian chronicles written after the fact give a formulaic figure of tens of thousands killed defending the temple, which Thapar's historiographical study reads as a rhetorical convention repeated across several unrelated conquest narratives of the period rather than a count, and contemporary Sanskrit and Jain inscriptions from Saurashtra do not corroborate it or even mention the raid.

What Would Settle It Independent corroborating evidence from the Saurashtra region itself, archaeological or epigraphic, of a kind that is entirely absent from the record as it stands, or a named modern historian's reasoned estimate in place of the chronicle's formulaic figure.

Expertise Needed Medieval South Asian history; Indology; epigraphy

Question posed in Somanatha: The Many Voices of a History, Romila Thapar.

Open The Huichang Persecution of Buddhism

Why It Is Open Ennin's eyewitness diary and official Tang records document the persecution's scale in detail, including the 260,500 monks and nuns returned to lay life, but neither they nor any later Chinese history drawing on them records a death toll.

What Would Settle It A documented count from Tang administrative or local records of deaths directly caused by the persecution, distinct from the well recorded laicization total, should one ever surface in the surviving archive.

Expertise Needed Tang dynasty history; Chinese Buddhist history

Question posed in Ennin's Diary: The Record of a Pilgrimage to China in Search of the Law, Ennin, translated and annotated by Edwin O. Reischauer.