Michael Hunter. Confucius Beyond the Analects. Leiden: Brill, 2017.

Abstract

As the title suggests, Michael Hunter’s Confucius Beyond the Analects aims to debunk the traditional view of the received Lun yu as the most authoritative source of early Confucian teachings associated with the historical figure of Confucius. Hunter makes the case that our received Lun yu was assembled in the Western Han, probably around the time of the accession of Emperor Wu in 141 b.c.e. He further demonstrates that patterns of Kongzi references in our received corpus, as well as textual parallelisms, suggests that there was no authoritative written source of early Confucian teachings that circulated in the pre-Han period. PreHan authors drew widely from a variety of written sources when invoking Kongzi, whereas texts dating to the latter part of Wu’s reign tend to focus on our received Lun yu, suggesting the relatively sudden appearance on the scene of a newly canonical text. Most radically, he further argues that the material found in our received Lun yu was composed in the Western Han; the content and arrangement of this text reflects the particular needs and interests of the Western Han compilers, rather than being an expression of a Warring States (let alone early Warring States) tradition associated with Confucius and his disciples. “Wherever it came from, whenever it was compiled,” Hunter argues,