Disputed Statements

The Conversion of Ashoka, Religious Events

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns How Its Legacy Is Contested

Currently States How Buddhist Ashoka's own rock and pillar edicts, issued after his remorse over the conquest of Kalinga, actually are. Romila Thapar's Asoka and the Decline of the Mauryas (Oxford University Press, 1961) argues their dhamma is largely a shared civic ethic rather than sectarian doctrine, and scholars have differed since on how far the emperor of the inscriptions matches the pious Buddhist king of later chronicle.

Source Asoka and the Decline of the Mauryas, Romila Thapar tier 1

The Conversion of Ashoka, Religious Events

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns When It Happened

Currently States Traditionally placed around 263 BCE, in the years following the Kalinga War, though the exact year is not independently fixed and is inferred from Ashoka's own inscriptions.

According To Asoka and the Decline of the Mauryas

Ashoka's inscriptions describe his remorse after Kalinga and his turn to dharma without giving a single unambiguous calendar year, so the conventional circa 263 BCE date is a scholarly reconstruction rather than a directly recorded one.

Source Asoka and the Decline of the Mauryas, Romila Thapar tier 1

The Conversion of Vishtaspa, Religious Events

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns When It Happened

Currently States Mary Boyce's A History of Zoroastrianism (Brill, 1989) treats the conversion of Kavi Vishtaspa, the ruler whom tradition credits with sheltering Zarathustra, as a narrative episode from the tradition's own later literature rather than an independently dated event; since no external record identifies Vishtaspa with any known historical ruler, the episode's date, if it happened at all, is presumed only to fall within the same broad and disputed centuries proposed for Zarathustra's own life.

Source A History of Zoroastrianism, Mary Boyce tier 1

The Conversion of Vishtaspa, Religious Events

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Historicity

Currently States Mary Boyce's A History of Zoroastrianism (Brill, 1989) records that Kavi Vishtaspa, the patron ruler tradition credits with sheltering Zarathustra, cannot be securely identified with any independently attested historical figure outside the tradition's own later literature, and that the healed-horse narrative attached to his conversion, in which Zarathustra is said to have cured the king's paralysed horse as proof of his teaching, is widely read by scholars as later legendary elaboration.

Source A History of Zoroastrianism, Mary Boyce tier 1

The cosmic struggle of good and evil, Beliefs & Restrictions

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Origin Period Start Year

Currently States -1500

Mary Boyce's A History of Zoroastrianism, Brill, 1989, dates the Gathas, the hymns the tradition ascribes to Zarathushtra himself, by the archaic state of their Avestan language, which stands close enough to Vedic Sanskrit that the two can be cross-dated by the same comparative linguistic methods used to date the Rigveda, pointing to roughly 1500 to 1000 BCE. Boyce sets that linguistic dating against a separate, later tradition, followed by classical Greek writers, that places Zarathushtra centuries afterward, a reckoning with no comparable linguistic evidence behind it. Because both the cosmic struggle of good and evil and the ethical triad of good thoughts, good words and good deeds are taught within the Gathas themselves, the origin period of both teachings is exactly as uncertain as Zarathushtra's own date, and it moves between the two proposals with it.

Source A History of Zoroastrianism, Mary Boyce tier 1

The cosmic struggle of good and evil, Beliefs & Restrictions

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Origin Period End Year

Currently States -600

Mary Boyce's A History of Zoroastrianism, Brill, 1989, dates the Gathas, the hymns the tradition ascribes to Zarathushtra himself, by the archaic state of their Avestan language, which stands close enough to Vedic Sanskrit that the two can be cross-dated by the same comparative linguistic methods used to date the Rigveda, pointing to roughly 1500 to 1000 BCE. Boyce sets that linguistic dating against a separate, later tradition, followed by classical Greek writers, that places Zarathushtra centuries afterward, a reckoning with no comparable linguistic evidence behind it. Because both the cosmic struggle of good and evil and the ethical triad of good thoughts, good words and good deeds are taught within the Gathas themselves, the origin period of both teachings is exactly as uncertain as Zarathushtra's own date, and it moves between the two proposals with it.

Source A History of Zoroastrianism, Mary Boyce tier 1

The Council of Chalcedon, Councils and Synods

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns How Its Legacy Is Contested

Currently States Whether the miaphysite position the council rejected differs in substance from the one it defined, or only in vocabulary. Agreed statements since the twentieth century have said the faith is the same.

The canonical separation continues while the Christological difference is increasingly described as terminological by both sides.

Source The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine, Jaroslav Pelikan tier 1

The Council of Constance, Councils and Synods

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns How Its Legacy Is Contested

Currently States Whether Haec Sancta is a binding conciliar definition of the authority of councils over popes. Eamon Duffy's Saints and Sinners: A History of the Popes (Yale University Press, 2006) traces how later popes repudiated the decree and how Catholic canonists have argued the question of its binding force ever since, with no papal or conciliar ruling since Constance settling it.

Source Saints and Sinners: A History of the Popes, Eamon Duffy tier 1

The Council of Dvin, Councils and Synods

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns How Its Legacy Is Contested

Currently States What the rejection amounts to is itself contested. The Oriental Orthodox churches hold that they confess one incarnate nature of the Word without dividing or confusing divinity and humanity. Agreed statements in the later twentieth century concluded that the two families hold the same faith in different formulae, and the formal separation stands.

Source Two Thousand Years of Coptic Christianity, Otto F. A. Meinardus tier 1

The Council of Ephesus, Councils and Synods

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns How Its Legacy Is Contested

Currently States How far Cyril of Alexandria and Nestorius actually disagreed in substance, as against disagreeing about vocabulary; Jaroslav Pelikan's The Christian Tradition (University of Chicago Press, 1971) traces the doctrinal history, and modern bilateral statements between Rome and the Assyrian Church of the East, which never accepted Ephesus, have since found substantial common ground on the underlying Christology.

Source The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine, Jaroslav Pelikan tier 1

The Council of Jerusalem, Councils and Synods

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns How Its Legacy Is Contested

Currently States Whether the meeting in Acts 15 and the meeting Paul describes in Galatians 2 are the same occasion. The accounts differ in who attended, what was decided and how the decision was reached, a divergence the Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (3rd revised edition, Cross and Livingstone, eds., Oxford University Press, 2005) treats as unresolved: the two passages are the only surviving sources and neither refers to the other.

The two passages are the only sources and neither refers to the other. No independent record exists.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised edition, F. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.) tier 1

The Council of Lhasa, Councils and Synods

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Point in Dispute

Currently States Who won the eighth century debate between the Indian gradualist Kamalasila and the Chinese Chan teacher Moheyan. Sam van Schaik's Tibet: A History (Yale University Press, 2011) notes that the Tibetan histories have Kamalasila prevail and the emperor rule for the Indian gradual path, while the Chinese document recovered at Dunhuang has Moheyan prevail instead.

Source Tibet: A History, Sam van Schaik tier 1

The Council of Lhasa, Councils and Synods

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns How Firmly It Is Attested

Currently States Historicity debated

Whether this was a single staged debate at all is argued. Demieville edited the Chinese material as the record of a council; later work reads it as an exchange of written positions over a period, which the Tibetan tradition afterwards organised into a contest between two champions.

Source Le concile de Lhasa: une controverse sur le quietisme entre bouddhistes de l'Inde et de la Chine au VIIIe siecle de l'ere chretienne, Paul Demieville tier 1

The Council of Mathura, Councils and Synods

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Point in Dispute

Currently States How the Mathura recension relates to the Valabhi recension made at about the same time. The tradition remembers that the two did not match, and presents the later Valabhi redaction as the settlement without recording what was reconciled or on whose authority.

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

The Council of Six, Councils and Synods

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Point in Dispute

Currently States Whether the council's composition and Abd al-Rahman ibn Awf's two-part question were neutral consultation or an arrangement stacked against Ali from the start. A voting bloc favoring Uthman existed among Abd al-Rahman, Sa'd ibn Abi Waqqas and Uthman himself, three of the six; the Ansar were excluded from the body entirely; and Ali is reported to have complained at the time that the process had been arranged against him.

Source The Succession to Muhammad: A Study of the Early Caliphate, Wilferd Madelung tier 1

The Council of Trent, Councils and Synods

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns How Its Legacy Is Contested

Currently States Whether Trent, which met across eighteen years and three periods of session, was primarily a reaction to the Reformation or the maturing of Catholic reform movements already under way. Diarmaid MacCulloch's Reformation: Europe's House Divided 1490-1700 (Allen Lane, 2003) is among the historians who increasingly argue the second alongside the first.

Source Reformation: Europe's House Divided 1490-1700, Diarmaid MacCulloch tier 1

The Council of Valabhi, Councils and Synods

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns When It Happened

Currently States Paul Dundas's The Jains (Routledge, 2002) records that the council held at Valabhi in Gujarat under Devarddhigani Kshamashramana, which committed the Svetambara Agamas to writing after centuries of oral transmission, carries two traditional dates, 453 and 466 CE, that Jain sources themselves have never reconciled, though both fall within the same fifth century window and neither is disputed by the Digambara, who instead reject the council's authority to fix scripture at all rather than its date.

Source The Jains, Paul Dundas tier 1

The Craft (1996), Screen Works

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Scholarly Reception

Currently States Reception within the Wiccan and wider Pagan community has been genuinely divided since the film's release. Wren Walker, co-founder of the practitioner site The Witches' Voice, criticized the film on the grounds that a general audience "would certainly not be clear...which parts...show actual practices and which are Hollywood fabrications," and argued that hiring a real priestess as consultant mainly lent unearned "credibility to an otherwise inaccurate portrayal," a concern sharpened by the film's dark, harm driven magic, which runs directly against the Wiccan Rede's central ethic of harming none. A more favorable retrospective published on the Pagan news site The Wild Hunt takes the opposite reading: that Devin succeeded in presenting ritual elements accurately enough to be genuinely useful to young seekers, without ever disclosing anything initiation specific.

Source Elison, "Classics of Pagan Cinema: The Craft," The Wild Hunt, 2023, Meg Elison tier 2

The Creation in Six Days, Myths & Sacred Narratives

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Scholarly Note

Currently States The two Genesis accounts are harmonised as summary and close focus in traditional exegesis and treated as distinct sources in critical scholarship

Two standing camps rather than an absence of positions: traditional harmonising exegesis in all three traditions against the source-critical reading standard in academic biblical studies since the eighteenth century.

Source Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd edition, Michael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik (eds.) tier 1

The Crone, Deities

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Contested or Appropriated Modern Use

Currently States Identity Uncertain

According To Wicca

Ronald Hutton's The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft, Oxford University Press, 1999, traces the Triple Goddess framework, of which the Crone is one aspect, to a twentieth century synthesis rather than to an unbroken ancient lineage, and documents that because Wicca and the wider modern pagan movement have no central doctrinal authority, individual lineages have developed independently on what the Crone aspect represents. Because no central authority exists to settle the question, more than one reading remains in current use among covens that agree on much else.

Source The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft, Ronald Hutton tier 1