Consequential misunderstandings regarding the terms jinwen 今文 and guwen 古文 in recent English-language scholarship on the Higher Writings (Shang shu 尚書): a review article.
Bamboo and Silk, 2025
Several persistent errors in English-language accounts of the textual history of the Higher Writi... more Several persistent errors in English-language accounts of the textual history of the Higher Writings (Shang shu 尚書) go back at least as far as Creel’s 1970 Origins of Statecraft and have appeared in recent work including the two books that are the primary focus here. The errors relate to the terms “jinwen” 今文 and “guwen” 古文, but their consequences are
not merely terminological. They render insecure some of the interpretations advanced in the books under review. There is only one received version of the Higher Writings, not two. There is no such thing as a “received modern-script recension,” and attempts to cite it lead to a chain of further errors. There is a well-founded scholarly consensus regarding the ca. 317 CE recension of the Higher Writings and the extent that forgery played in it. Arguments to the effect that concepts of forgery or authenticity are problematic or in need of “rethinking” betray an unfamiliarity with that consensus and the evidence (palaeography, medieval commentary, and Qing and modern studies in Chinese) that supports it. Several key aspects of this consensus have not previously been well-summarized in English, so I provide a compressed summary here. I suggest that the concepts jinwen and guwen, even when used correctly, have already been stretched to the limits of usefulness by the current understanding of the Writings and their textual history. They should be replaced with less confusing alternatives.
Uploads
Papers by Adam Smith
longer journey than many people realize. The ancestor of most alphabets
used today was invented in the Levant (Eastern Mediterranean coastal region), and the Penn Museum’s new Eastern Mediterranean Gallery showcases this invention as one of the region’s most influential legacies for the modern world. In the three stories that follow, we highlight little-known chapters of the alphabet’s amazing history.
of tombs ca. 1200 CE from what is now Jiangxi Province, People’s Republic of China. At that date, the Jiangxi region was governed by the Song dynasty from the capital at Lin’an 臨安 (now Hangzhou) after
the loss of North China to the Jurchen conquest. The tomb belonged not to a member of the Song elite, but to a person of relatively modest social status, perhaps a provincial official. The objects were collected in
the 1930s, and similar examples have been published by archaeologists since the second half of the 20th century.
The figurines are fascinating because of the diversity of divine beings that they represent. Even a relatively ordinary person might have more than two dozen distinct deities represented by figurines buried in their tomb. By examining features of the figurines, comparing them to examples from
other tombs, and reading contemporary written accounts, we can understand who the figurines represent and how they related to cosmological beliefs.
not merely terminological. They render insecure some of the interpretations advanced in the books under review. There is only one received version of the Higher Writings, not two. There is no such thing as a “received modern-script recension,” and attempts to cite it lead to a chain of further errors. There is a well-founded scholarly consensus regarding the ca. 317 CE recension of the Higher Writings and the extent that forgery played in it. Arguments to the effect that concepts of forgery or authenticity are problematic or in need of “rethinking” betray an unfamiliarity with that consensus and the evidence (palaeography, medieval commentary, and Qing and modern studies in Chinese) that supports it. Several key aspects of this consensus have not previously been well-summarized in English, so I provide a compressed summary here. I suggest that the concepts jinwen and guwen, even when used correctly, have already been stretched to the limits of usefulness by the current understanding of the Writings and their textual history. They should be replaced with less confusing alternatives.