The Analects mainly records the words and actions of Confucius and his disciples. It was compiled by later transmitters, presenting sayings formed through a long process of collection and editing.
Confucius emphasized learning, ritual, and moral practice. Understanding his thought requires attention to the passages and their historical context rather than an isolated famous sentence.
Creation of the text
The Book of Han, written by Ban Gu, presents a traditional account of how the Analects originated. Confucius's disciples kept individual records of their conversations with their teacher, then collected and edited those records after his death in 479 BCE. Its Chinese title, Lunyu, can be understood as selected speeches or edited conversations. Later interpreters accepted this broad account of the work's origins. The Song dynasty scholar Zhu Xi, for example, understood it as a record made by Confucius's first and second generations of pupils. This means the book is already an act of transmission: readers encounter teachings preserved, arranged, and interpreted by a community after the teacher's lifetime.
This traditional view has been challenged by Chinese, Japanese, and Western scholars. The Qing dynasty philologist Cui Shu argued on linguistic ground that the last five books were produced much later than the rest of the work. Itō Jinsai claimed that, because of differences he saw in patterns of language and content in the Analects, a distinction in authorship should be made between the "upper Analects" (Books 1–10) and "lower Analects" (Books 11–20). Arthur Waley speculated that Books 3–9 represent the earliest parts of the book. E. Bruce Brooks and A. Taeko Brooks reviewed previous theories of the chapters' creation and produced a "four stratum theory" of the text's creation.
Many modern scholars now believe that the work was compiled over a period of around two hundred years, some time during the Warring States period (476–221 BCE), with some questioning the authenticity of some of the sayings. Prior to 2015, no manuscript dated earlier than c. 70 BCE has been discovered, and because the Analects was not referred to by name in any existing source before the early Han dynasty, some scholars have proposed dates as late as 140 BCE for the text's final compilation. In the 2010s, ancient manuscripts containing content matching the received text were recovered by the Anhui University and in Wangjiazui, which date back to before 300 BCE. The discoveries of these manuscripts confirmed that at least by the mid-Warring States period, the tradition of preserving and organizing Confucius' sayings had existed.
Regardless of how early the text of the Analects existed, most Analects scholars believe that by the early Han dynasty (206 BCE–220 CE) the book was widely known and transmitted throughout China in a mostly complete form, and that the book acquired its final, complete form during the Han dynasty. However, Han dynasty writer Wang Chong claimed that all copies of the Analects that existed during the Han dynasty were incomplete and formed only a part of a much larger work. This is supported by the fact that a larger collection of Confucius's teachings did exist in the Warring States period than has been preserved directly in the Analects: 75% of Confucius's sayings cited by his second-generation student, Mencius, do not exist in the received text of the Analects.
Textual history
According to the Han dynasty scholar Liu Xiang, there were two versions of the Analects that existed at the beginning of the Han dynasty: the "Lu version" and the "Qi version". The Lu version contained twenty chapters, and the Qi version contained twenty-two chapters, including two chapters not found in the Lu version. Of the twenty chapters that both versions had in common, the Lu version had more passages. Each version had its own masters, schools, and transmitters.