lpetrich

There are serious speculations that Buddha, Confucius, and Lao-Tze were at least partially mythical; I wonder how Buddhists, Confucians, and Taoists, or at least the more philosophical ones, regard such speculations.

I've started a thread over in Biblical Criticism and Archeology on Jesus Christ as a Mythic Hero; I wonder how the Buddha, Confucius, and Lao-Tze would fare. I think that the Buddha would at least half-fit, due to his miraculous birth and his being the offspring of a king.

And Hinduism has Krishna; I don't know much about him (any short summary biography anywhere?); but some features of his life do seem to fit the Mythic-Hero profile (his being an avatar of Vishnu, the wicked king Kamsa coming after him when he was a baby).

Boshko

Well there was a long standing tradition of Lao Tzu (Tzu = master in chinese, its a title for teachers/sages not a game) was a great sage who was a contemporary of Confucius and taught him a few things about ritual. The Tao Te Ching (which Lao Tzu supposedly wrote) doesn't fit with this myth of Lao Tzu at all. Its very anti-ritual and there's a great number of reasons to think that it was written (or the process of writing it was begun) well after Confucius lived. For example, the length of many of its Chapters are much to long to be etched on bamboo strips (as was done in Confucius' day). Also the Mo Tzu text which was definately written after Confucius died, dedicates a great deal of effort to attacking Confucianism,(including saying that Confucians walk like castrated pigs ) but doesn't even mention Taoism. Also Mencius, a later Confucian writer, debutts the position of a great number of different schools of thought, but doesn't mention Taoism or the Tao Te Ching. But later Mohist, Legalist, and Confucian writers are obviously familiar with Taoism and either incorporate elements of it or attack it.
So the Tao Te Ching was almost certainly not written by Lao Tzu, but was simply attributed to him (and EXTREMALLY common practice in ancient, and not so ancient, China). This really doesn't hurt Taoism since it stands or falls on the content of its texts not on the actions of its founders.

As far as Confucius goes, the general consensus is that he existed and didn't write all of the Analects (which are attributed to him and full of statement such as Confucius said/did X, while the Tao Te Ching doesn't even mention Lao Tzu) especially since there are rulers called by the name that they were only given after they died (there's a Chinese tradition of giving rulers additional names after they die) who DEFINATELY died after Confucius. There's a huge amount of controversy about exactly how much Confucius wrote and when and by who the rest was written. The Origonal Analects by Brooks and Brooks is kind of the almost none of the Analects comes from Confucius extreme of the debate. It argues that only parts of Book 4 of the Analects comes directly from Confucius and only something like Books 5-9 were written by people who had known Confucius (with numerous interpolations throughout those chapters). And that much of the Analects was written hundreds of years after Confucius and then stuck in his mouth (and often not dishonestly, since doing this thing was quite expected at in the time place where it was done). They present a lot of excellent evidence, including charting changes of ideology within the Analects, changes in writings styles, reaction to people/events that took place well after Confucius, etc.

This doesn't hurt Confucianism nearly as much as Christianity is hurt by similar efforts, since nowhere is it claimed that Confucius is a God or was recording divine wisdom. However there is a lot of X is right because Confucius said X is right sort of reasoning, and knowing that most of what Confucius is supposed to have written wasn't actually written by people who even knew him weakens that a lot.