Diogenes the Cynic

Have the Analects been analyzed for style, vocabulary and philosophical consistency the way some other litearture has been analyzed (e.g the letters of Paul or the works of Shakespeare) in order to determine the liklihood of a single author?

I know that the Tao Te Ching atually shows several different dialects and is probably a compilation of folk sayings redacted with commentaries. Lao Tse is pretty much a fictional character contrived as an author for sayings which had origins all over the place (Lao Tse is somewhat comparable to "Mother Goose" in that regard).

I don't know what kind of analysis has been done on the Analects, though, and if they show a linguistic and philosophical consistency indicative of a single author (or at least a single philosophical school or community) then we can call the author "Confucius" without regard to any legendary details of his biography.

I also think it should be said that Confucius is not really comparable to Jesus as far as historical dubiousness because he does not fit the mythological profile that Jesus does. Confucius is not a figure of worship, nor is he supposed to have had any supernatural abilities. He has nothing of the fantastic or the otherworldly to him. That doesn't mean he existed (and the same things can be said about Homer) but the circumstancial evidence for Confucius combined with a basic level of plausibility lacking in Jesus (at least the Jesus of the Gospels) do not make the existence of a historical Confucius as doubtful on its face as the Jesus myth does for Jesus.

Vivisector

I thought about addressing this last night but, frankly, had exhausted my limited intellectual steam.

I'm still not siding with the OP on the comparability of Confucius and Jesus, because I really don't know enough about Confucius to make an informed judgement - Apollonius of Tyana might have come to mind before Confucius. My question is, should Jesus be "penalized" for being worshipped, having miraculous deeds attached to him, etc.? In other words, should evidence of his historical existence be forced to meet a higher standard of proof simply because - for whatever reasons - he became the subject of mythmaking? Why not simply disregard the obviously mythological elements and proceed with the comparison between Jesus and Confucius or whomever? It seems ironic that then - as now - mythology tended to develop around persons who were relatively well-known and whose existence was otherwise well documented; yet, in Jesus's case, mythological development often seems to be a greater reason to doubt his existence.

I know that some of the mythological content associated with Jesus is unique, and that if one bracketed out all mythological content (or content related to mythology), one might be left with little - if anything - to work with. Still, if JM methods and criteria with regard to existence of HJ are applicable only in the unique case of Jesus, then I think there is a vulnerability to the charge of an ad hoc approach.

ohwilleke

Part of the problem is that the Analects come to us as a document in a written language that has been exceedingly stable, because the written Chinese language consisting as it does of ideograms, instead of being phonetic, and restricted as it has been, until quite recently, to an elite educated class doesn't have nearly as much "identifying" personal information.

Student in Japan and China still read the Analects in the original by grade school children. By comparison, the Canterbury Tales or Beowulf, are not nearly so old and only upper division college students are expected to stuggle through those works in the original.

Diogenes the Cynic

I totally get what you're saying, Viv, and I pretty much agree with you as far as the bare existence of HJ (I am not a JM, FWIW.). I just think that the mythological elements of the Gospels make them extremely unreliable as sources of authentic information about HJ- far more so than do the oldest biographies of Confucius do about him.

ohwilleke

One of the most questionable aspect of the Confucious story is that we have none of his own writings. Like the Gospels, the Koran, and the writings of Plato, the Analects do not claim to be written by Confucious, they claim to be written by students transcribing his oral statements.

Yet, Confucious was not a carpenter's son, or a former nomadic tribesman. He was a bureaucrat (by tradition anyway). Why would such a literate philosopher leave absolutely nothing in his own hand? In China, calligraphy is a high art. There is great respect for the way in which one writes. If he was really a big deal at the time, one would have expected great efforts to preserve his script. But, we have none.

Vivisector

It's a real problem, isn't it? Assuming that, after deleting all the mythological elements and everything that can be reasonably assumed as deriving from mythology, Christology, heresiology, etc., there's anything left at all, we're still left with the proposition of taking a guy seriously about something innocuous when the same guy said dead people came out of their tombs and walked around. It's a helluva credibility issue.

Maybe this is just another of those cases where it's tough to apply principles of "hard" science to other fields of inquiry, and maybe it's just the engineer in me wanting to see some rules and experimentation, but it would be interesting to see it done.

Cheers,

V.

Toto

Everything written about Jesus has obvious mythological elements.

You can compare Jesus with Alexander the Great - a lot of myth grew up around Alexander, including supernatural events and a miraculous birth, and a novelistic romantic version of his life. But there is a parallel history of Alexander that meets the standards of historians - works by people who actually knew him, writings about him by contemporaries, writings about him by enemies, evidence of his military conquests, coins with his picture, statues, etc.

The quest for the historical Jesus is in its third phase, and is still trying to extract some history from the surviving mythology. There's no reason to think it will ever be successful.

Answerer

No during his times, he llived during the chaotic Spring and Autumn periods where wars were a common sight and there were tens or hundreds of kingdoms in China. The kings then were more concerned with fighting and politics. No one seems want to bother about a 'mad' philosopher wandering and preaching around China about rites, morals and wise rule of a kingdom. In addition, Confucian was a bloody poor man since he rejected the offer of becoming a offical and prefered wandering.

As for preservation, it was pretty hard to preserve anything during that wartime period.

Answerer

Well, actually Confucius did meet up with Lao Tze in one of his works. In fact, he stated that he was nothing compared to Lao Tze. So, if Confucius did exist, which was most likely, there was probably another supporting evidence for Lao Tze existence despite his mythical content.

I'm sure his disciples knew a deal about his personal lifestory which evolved into traditional beliefs (But, of course, they choose to focus on his teachings instead). Especially since there were hundreds of them and 72 of them were actually quite famous.

Confucius' disciples record

Ooohhh, you will be surprised. Chinese do pray to him as some kind of god, if you happen to drop by any chinese temple. Do check it out.

exile

Probably been said before but:

In the case of Plato or Confucius, their existence is less important than the ideas they (allegedly) put forward.

In the case of Christ, though many of his ideas stand on their own independent of his existence, the Christian religion is dependent on Jesus
existing and on his death and resurrection occuring more or less as described in the NT.

Therefore it is IMPORTANT that Jesus existed (or didn't - or did exist but the resurrection didn't occur, etc). If we apply the same standards of evidence to the existence of Confucius and Christ and decide we can't be sure either of them ever existed - then frankly, it doesn't matter very much if Confucius existed other than to historians.