Original Analects Supplement
Appendix 3

Pages: 258

General. Appendix 3 is where the hypothesis which was derived by formal arguments in Appendix 1, and tested by its developmental plausibility in Appendix 2, is further tested against the other texts with which the Analects is evidently related. The chief point of interest here is to see whether the proposed chronology of the Analects material can account for, or is consistent with, the sometimes back-and-forth dialogue which it seems to be having with a food number of 04th and 03rd century texts. Our conclusion is that the interlock is very good, and does not raise problems for any of the texts in question, or for the absolute dates which can be assigned to certain of parts of them.

The chief exhibit is the long series of Mician interactions, chiefly with MZ 46-50, which we see as a sort of Mician Analects, imiting the style of the Confucian Analects, and probably composed in contact with, and in parallel with, the Confucian Analects from the middle of the 04th century to the early 03rd century. It is notable that as the Confucian Analects gets less organized (the Tswei Shu layer, LY 16-20), its dialogue with the Mician parallel Analects gets less detailed and less easy to see. The general impression is that the group behind the Confucian Analects becomes somehow less consequential politically. For its part, the Mician text stream becomes increasingly self-confident. We probably have here a reflection of the rising political fortunes of the Micians in Lu, as against the declining influence of the Confucians.

258. The interaction here noted has consequences for the Jwangdz. It appears that besides JZ 4, many of the Jwangdz chapters taking shape at this time underwent a confrontation with Confucius, and that some of them (JZ 6 is the clearest example) made the same response as did JZ 4, namely, admitting the justice of the criticism (which is an imputation of cowardice) and coming to engage more than previously with the Confucian imperative of government service, or with conventional morality. The "Confucian" member in these confrontations is not always the Analects; in JZ 6, it is instead the Sywndz. The synchronisms of the Jwangdz itself put the Sywndz attack in the same timeframe as the Analects attack, and since Sywndz cannot be dated earlier than the early middle 03c, LY 18 must be placed there as well.

 

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