THE ORIGINAL ANALECTS      
by Bruce & Taeko Brooks, Columbia University Press, 1998.
This book has challenged the traditional idea that the Analects mostly contains sayings of Confucius himself. The traditional view is held for example by Simon Leys:
"The Analects is the only place where we can actually encounter the real, living Confucius. In this sense, the Analects is to Confucius what the Gospels are to Jesus. The text, which consists of a discontinuous series of brief statements, short dialogues and anecdotes, was compiled by two successive generations of disciples (disciples and disciples of disciples), over some seventy-five years after Confucius's death-which means that the compilation was probably completed a little before, or around, 400 B.C. The text is a patchwork: fragments from different hands have been stitched together, with uneven skill-there are some repetitions, interpolations, and contradictions; there are some puzzles and countless loopholes; but on the whole, there are very few stylistic anachronisms: the language and syntax of most of the fragments is coherent and pertains to the same period." (Simon Leys, The Analects of Confucius)
 
To the Brooks, the oldest core is chapters 4 to 9. It is still close to Confucius' original thought and was finished around 400 BC by the first two generations of disciples. The other chapters were added later, during a period of 150 years, by successors who were members of the Kong family. Confucius had emphasized the importance of cultivating ren (humanity), whereas those later successors made li (social ritual) the essential value. To highlight their newer ideas, they placed three of their later chapters at the beginning of the book.

REVIEWS : 
Mansvelt Beck, in IIAS Newsletter (Dec. 1998)
John Makeham, in China Review International (Spring 1999): in 2 parts
Fred Contrada, in the Union-News (May 1999)
John B. Henderson, in the Journal of Asian Studies (August 1999)
T.C. Kline, in Pacific Affairs (Summer 1999)
Whalen Lai, in Asian Philosophy (November 1999)
Edward Slingerland, in Philosophy East & West (January 2000)