For the past two millennia, the most trusted source of Confucius' teachings has been the
Analects (Lunyu, the Selected Sayings of Confucius), a text thought to have been
compiled by Confucius' closest disciples in the 5th century BCE. From its canonization
in the Han to its invocation in the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics, the
Analects has long dominated the popular and scholarly imagining of Confucius. In this talk I challenge the standard view of the text by arguing from a comprehensive survey of
early Confucius quotations that it was compiled no earlier than the Western Han
(202 BCE–9 CE) period, roughly three centuries later than is usually supposed.
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