An Existential Reading of the Confucian Analects By Andrew Zhon ...

Confucius’s sayings and behavior preserved by his immediate disciples or by those disciples’ disciples, and different disciples must have had different styles of writing or transmitting orally what they had heard or observed. Inconsistency of style between sections and even within a particular section is thus a reflection of honesty on the part of those who committed the sayings to writing.

Finally, the assumption that the Analects evolved over time cannot be categorically accepted. It might be true that the text evolved from the notes of Confucius’s immediate disciples to the final work done by Zengzi’s disciples, but it is highly improbable that the work lasted 230 years. Indeed, Brooks and Brooks’s argument for such a wide span of time of evolution is not convincing. For instance, they argue that sections 12 and 13 were either produced by Mencius (372–289 BCE) or written under his direct influence. But the topics that interested Mencius—such as human nature and cultivating qi—are not present in these sections.³⁷ Indeed, the doctrinal disputes typical during the Warring States period are not discernable in the Analects. This further proves that the Analects must have been produced much earlier that the evolutionists wish to believe. As for the style consistency argument, it has the advantage of explaining inconsistencies within or between sections, but it cannot explain why quite a number of chapters are repeated.³⁸ The repetitions or different versions of the same sayings are kept in the Analects probably because the compilers viewed everything they received from the month of Confucius as sacred. This further suggests that the Analects might have taken shape at the time when personal witnesses of Confucius’ sayings were still available. The situation is, in fact, similar to the preservation of different gospels in the New Testament: each section or book reflects different angles from which the master was seen and heard by various members of his inner circle of disciples, and repetitions of Jesus’ sayings are also kept. Or it is like the Zhuzi Yulei (; Classified conversations of Master Zhu), in which different disciples of Master Zhu recorded what they had heard from the master and somehow combined their texts to produce the final version of the work.