Open Questions

Open S2

Why It Is Open The sign appears at the tail of the longer Ugaritic school abecedaries, written a second time after the twenty-ninth sign, and its shape is conventionally described as samekh-like. No Ugaritic source names it, and specialists disagree on its basic function: some read it as an additional native sibilant the ordinary twenty-nine signs did not distinguish, others treat it chiefly as a device for spelling words of foreign origin. No other script modelled in this atlas offers even an approximate cognate to compare it against, unlike Ugaritic's other five signs unique among its Northwest Semitic peers, all five of which correspond cleanly to a preserved Arabic letter.

What Would Settle It A systematic survey of every attested occurrence of the sign in the Ugaritic textual corpus, not only the abecedaries, checked for whether it clusters in loanwords or foreign personal and place names, which would support the spelling-device reading, against whether it appears in ordinary native vocabulary in a way the standard twenty-nine signs could not otherwise write, which would support a distinct native phoneme.

Expertise Needed Ugaritology; Northwest Semitic historical phonology

Question posed in The World's Writing Systems, Peter T. Daniels and William Bright (eds.).

Open Thomas Rudd

Why It Is Open The Harley, Sloane and Wellcome manuscripts attributed to Rudd carry no colophon naming his birth or death, and the attribution of the pairing scheme to him is itself questioned; nothing in the catalogued source establishes his life dates.

What Would Settle It A parish register, will, or dated professional record, a military engineering commission or a mathematical publication, identifying this Thomas Rudd distinctly from others of the same name, or a codicological study dating the Harley and Sloane manuscripts against a known biography.

Expertise Needed Manuscript studies, seventeenth century English biography

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

Open Ibn Mujahid

Why It Is Open The modern study of Ibn Mujahid's selection of the seven readers works from his writing and its later citation; it does not supply his own birth or death year, and no other catalogued source does either.

What Would Settle It A biographical dictionary entry from the classical Islamic biographical literature giving his dates, checked against the Kitab al-Sab'a's own internal dating to the early fourth century AH.

Expertise Needed Islamic intellectual history, Arabic biographical literature

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

Open Johann Kaspar Hechtel

Why It Is Open The source that documents Hechtel's 1799 death and the game's publication gives no birth year, and no other catalogued source supplies one.

What Would Settle It A Nuremberg civic or guild record identifying Hechtel's baptism or birth, of the kind that has dated other Nuremberg engravers and publishers of the period.

Expertise Needed German book and print history

Question posed in A Wicked Pack of Cards: The Origins of the Occult Tarot, Ronald Decker, Thierry Depaulis and Michael Dummett.

Open The Sampo

Why It Is Open The runes are not consistent about what the object is, and the Kalevala is a compilation that Elias Lonnrot arranged heavily, with the Sampo cycle among the parts he shaped most. Readings offered include a mill of plenty, the world pillar with the many-coloured lid as the sky vault, a coin die or treasury reflecting Byzantine trade contact, and a shamanic drum. None has been established and the singers may not have agreed either.

What Would Settle It Systematic analysis of the unedited rune collections in the Finnish Literature Society archive against Lonnrot's editorial drafts, to establish what the singers themselves said before the compilation; comparative work with Karelian, Ingrian and Sami material; and lexical study of the word sampo and its cognates.

Expertise Needed Finnish and Karelian folkloristics; historical linguistics; archival study of the Lonnrot papers

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

Open Ezana of Aksum

Why It Is Open Aksum has left no king list, annals or dated document for the fourth century. The reign is placed in the middle of the century only by inference: the sequence in which his coin types appear, the order of his stone inscriptions, and the single external synchronism of the letter from Constantius II preserved in Athanasius, which itself carries no year. No birth or death date is recorded at all, and published reign estimates differ by more than a decade at either end.

What Would Settle It A dated Aksumite document naming the king, a securely dated external record synchronising his reign with a fixed event, or a scientifically dated archaeological deposit stratified against the coin sequence, for example radiocarbon dates from a closed context containing both his pre-Christian and Christian issues.

Expertise Needed Aksumite archaeology and numismatics; Ge'ez and Sabaean epigraphy; late Roman documentary history

Question posed in Ancient Churches of Ethiopia: Fourth-Fourteenth Centuries, David W. Phillipson.

Open Gebre Meskel

Why It Is Open The Aksumite state left no king list, no annals and no dated administrative document for the sixth century. Kaleb can be placed in the 520s only through external synchronisms with the Himyar campaign, and his successors are known chiefly from coin types whose relative order is clearer than their absolute dates. Ethiopian regnal traditions assign Gebre Meskel a long reign, but those traditions are hagiographic compilations of a much later period and give figures that cannot be checked against anything. No published estimate rests on evidence rather than on the same tradition restated.

What Would Settle It A dated Aksumite inscription or document naming him, an external synchronism placing his reign against a fixed event in Byzantine, Sasanian or south Arabian record, or a scientifically dated archaeological deposit stratified against his coin issues, for example radiocarbon or archaeomagnetic dates from a closed context containing coinage of the post-Kaleb sequence.

Expertise Needed Aksumite archaeology and numismatics; Geez and Sabaean epigraphy; Byzantine and south Arabian documentary history

Question posed in Ancient Churches of Ethiopia: Fourth-Fourteenth Centuries, David W. Phillipson.

Open Americas

Why It Is Open Ptolemy's four quarters divide only the oikoumene, the inhabited world known in the second century, and the western hemisphere lies wholly outside it. No quarter, triplicity or planetary co-ruler was ever assigned to the Americas by the tradition that built the scheme, and nothing proposed since has acquired comparable standing. This is not a lost passage or a disputed reading; it is an absence created by the geographic horizon of the source.

What Would Settle It A survey of the mundane astrological literature from the sixteenth century onward, when the Americas entered European awareness, establishing whether any author extended the chorography to the new hemisphere, on what reasoning, and whether the extension was taken up by anyone else. A negative result would settle the entry as firmly as a positive one, and either way the entry ceases to be an open absence.

Expertise Needed History of astrology; early modern intellectual history; history of geographic knowledge

Question posed in A History of Western Astrology, Nicholas Campion.

Open The Fourth Buddhist Council in Kashmir

Why It Is Open The accounts that name a place do not name the same one, they are all late, northern and secondary, and no site has ever been identified on the ground. Nobody defends a location, so this is a gap in the record rather than an argument between camps.

What Would Settle It An inscription naming the assembly, or the excavation of a monastic complex in Kashmir or the north-west of the subcontinent large enough to house it and carrying Sarvastivada Abhidharma material of the right date.

Expertise Needed South Asian archaeology and epigraphy, working with Buddhist studies

Question posed in History of Indian Buddhism: From the Origins to the Saka Era, Etienne Lamotte, translated by Sara Webb-Boin.

Open Maui

Why It Is Open The atlas held two Maui rows that disagreed. The retired Character 413 stated that most Polynesian traditions treat him as a being of exceptional power within the human line rather than as an atua receiving cult. Deity 205 carries relation 4695, worshipped in Polynesian Religion, written as attested. Article 26230 on the retired row said only that in some traditions he stands closer to a god than to a man, which is weaker than either. The question was never researched; the two rows were written separately and neither knew of the other.

What Would Settle It Evidence of cult practice directed at Maui specifically: named heiau or marae dedicated to him, karakia or pule addressed to him rather than merely reciting his deeds, or offerings made to him, reported island group by island group rather than for Polynesia as a whole. A negative finding stated by a scholar of Polynesian religion would settle it equally well.

Expertise Needed Polynesian religious studies; Pacific anthropology

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

Open West African

Why It Is Open The grouping gathers deities from at least four distinct traditions: Ala, Amadioha and Chukwu are Igbo, Nyame, Asaase Yaa and Ananse are Akan, Amma and Nommo are Dogon, Roog is Serer, and Mami Wata is pan-regional rather than belonging to any of them. A pantheon in this atlas is tied to a single tradition, so naming one tradition for this grouping would assert that all of these deities belong to it, which is false. Vodun (West African) is already catalogued as a tradition in its own right, and the Fon pantheon points at it, so the umbrella is not simply a missing tradition.

What Would Settle It A scholarly judgment on whether a region can stand as a pantheon at all, or whether a pantheon must belong to a single tradition. If it must, the grouping splits into Igbo, Akan, Dogon and Serer pantheons and each deity is reassigned to the tradition that holds it. If it need not, the comparative grounds for treating West Africa as one pantheon need stating, and each deity still needs its own tradition recorded alongside the regional grouping.

Expertise Needed West African religious studies; Igbo, Akan, Dogon and Serer ethnography

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

Open Mexican Folk

Why It Is Open The pantheon holds one deity, Santa Muerte, and this atlas has no entry yet for Mexican folk Catholicism or for any tradition that would hold her. The gap is a missing tradition, not a missing link, so no connection can be recorded today.

What Would Settle It A decision on whether folk Catholicism should be catalogued as its own tradition or as a denomination of Catholicism, then the entry itself. The atlas already treats syncretic Afro-Caribbean traditions as their own traditions, which is the nearest precedent.

Expertise Needed Latin American religious studies; anthropology of folk Catholicism

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

Open Phrygian

Why It Is Open The pantheon holds Cybele and Attis and this atlas has no entry yet for Phrygian religion or for the Roman cult of Magna Mater that carried it westward. Several neighbouring ancient traditions already have their own entries, Hittite Religion, Etruscan Religion and Canaanite Religion among them, so the absence looks like a gap rather than a decision.

What Would Settle It An entry for Phrygian religion, or a decision that the cult belongs under an existing tradition such as Roman Religion, in which case the deities need reassigning rather than the pantheon relinking.

Expertise Needed Anatolian archaeology; Greco-Roman religion

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

Open Maasai

Why It Is Open The pantheon holds one deity, Engai, and this atlas has no entry yet for Maasai traditional religion. Comparable East and Southern African traditions already have their own entries, Zulu Traditional Religion and Shona Traditional Religion among them, so the absence is a gap in coverage rather than a considered position.

What Would Settle It An entry for Maasai traditional religion, written to the same standard as the Zulu and Shona entries, after which the pantheon links with no further decision.

Expertise Needed East African ethnography; Maasai religious studies

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

Open Skoptsy

Why It Is Open The sect produced no systematic theology. It left its teaching in hymns sung from memory and in the answers its members gave under interrogation, and almost everything recorded about that teaching passed through police, consistory and missionary hands. Those witnesses were prosecuting or refuting the sect and had every reason to record it at its most extreme, so the necessity claim may belong to the sect or to the men writing it down. The surviving hymn corpus has never been edited critically, and it has not been read against the depositions district by district and decade by decade.

What Would Settle It A critical edition of the Skoptsy hymn corpus and of the community manuscript books held in Russian archives, collated against the interrogation depositions from the same districts and dates, would show whether the necessity claim is the sect's own language or the language of the officials recording it.

Expertise Needed Slavic philology and the history of Russian religious dissent, with archival access to imperial police and consistory files

Question posed in Castration and the Heavenly Kingdom: A Russian Folktale, Laura Engelstein, The state's files on the sect and the problem of reading a doctrine out of them.

Open Kimbanguist Church

Why It Is Open The scholarly literature the atlas holds on this church is Marie-Louise Martin's 1975 study and Bengt Sundkler's earlier comparative work on prophet movements, which argue opposite readings of the founder's status but both predate the church's later doctrinal development by decades. The atlas has no source of its own for what the church's leadership has taught since, so the debated relation it carries is written from the two twentieth century camps only.

What Would Settle It A current Kimbanguist catechetical or confessional document, or a recent peer-reviewed study of the church's twenty-first century teaching, either of which would let the debated relation be dated and scoped properly instead of resting on sources fifty years old.

Expertise Needed African church history; the study of African Initiated Churches; Congolese religious studies

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

Open Ransom Theory of the Atonement

Why It Is Open Patristic writers who named the devil were answered inside their own century by Gregory of Nazianzus, who held that paying the devil was an outrage and that paying the Father was scarcely better. Anselm denied that any claim existed to be bought out. No formulation of the recipient has ever obtained general assent, and the ransom vocabulary is used today by Christians who reject every mechanism proposed for it.

What Would Settle It Exegetical work establishing whether the ransom sayings were ever intended to carry a recipient at all, or whether the metaphor names a condition of captivity without implying a transaction. A finding either way would decide whether the recipient question is a real gap or a question the sources never posed.

Expertise Needed New Testament exegesis; patristics; the study of biblical metaphor

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

Open Christus Victor

Why It Is Open Aulen argued that a unified dramatic view ran through the patristic period and through Luther, and was obscured by the scholastic and liberal accounts. Specialists in patristics have objected that victory language sits alongside sacrificial, medicinal and pedagogical language in the same writers, and that sorting the material into three types flattens the evidence. The theological position and the historical claim are frequently defended and attacked as though they were one thing.

What Would Settle It A survey of the atonement language in the principal patristic writers that counts and contexts each register separately rather than assigning each writer to a type. This would establish whether the dramatic language is dominant, co-ordinate, or one register among several.

Expertise Needed Patristics; historical theology

Question posed in Christus Victor: An Historical Study of the Three Main Types of the Idea of the Atonement, Gustaf Aulen.

Open Penal Substitution

Why It Is Open Anselm framed punishment and satisfaction as alternatives and chose satisfaction, while the Reformed doctrine makes the satisfaction consist in the punishment being borne, and moves the setting from a court of honour to a criminal one. Both a continuity reading and a discontinuity reading are argued by serious historians of doctrine, and each has a stake in the answer: continuity supports the claim of an unbroken Western tradition, discontinuity supports the charge of a sixteenth century innovation.

What Would Settle It A study of the sixteenth century Reformed texts tracing exactly where the penal vocabulary enters, which medieval sources those writers were reading, and whether they understood themselves to be restating Anselm or correcting him. Their own statements about what they were doing have not been collected in one place.

Expertise Needed Historical theology; Reformation studies; medieval intellectual history

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

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.).