who is the author of the analects of confucius
Analects According to Ban Gu, writing in the Book of Han, the Analects originated as individual records kept by Confucius's disciples of conversations between the Master and them, which were then collected and jointly edited by the disciples after Confucius's death in 479 BC. The work is therefore titled Lunyu meaning "edited conversations" or "selected speeches" (i.e. analects).[1][3] This broadly forms the traditional account of the genesis of the work accepted by later generations of scholars, for example the Song dynasty neo-Confucian scholar Zhu Xi stated that Analects is the records of Confucius's first- and second-generation pupils.[4] The view however was challenged by Qing dynasty philologist Cui Shu (崔述, 1740–1816) who argued on linguistic ground that the last five books are much later than the rest of the work.[5][6] Many modern scholars now believe that the work was compiled over a period of around two hundred years, with some questioning the authenticity of some of the sayings.[7][8] Because no texts of the Analects have been discovered earlier, and because the Analects was not referred to by name in any existing source before the early Han dynasty, some scholars have proposed dates as late as 140 BC for the text's compilation.[9]