Laozi, Legendary Founder of Taoism

The event

Of all the figures considered in this cluster, none is harder to pin to an actual date—or even to actual existence—than Laozi ('Old Master'). Chinese tradition remembers him as an older contemporary of Confucius, a keeper of the royal archives under the Zhou dynasty who grew disillusioned with the corruption and ritualism of court life. According to the legend recorded by the historian Sima Qian more than four centuries later, Laozi eventually rode a water buffalo west toward the mountain passes at the edge of civilization, and a border guard, recognizing his wisdom, refused to let him pass until he wrote down his teaching. The result, in the story, was the Tao Te Ching—after which Laozi vanished into the west and was never heard from again.

It is a wonderful story, and it is worth being honest that it may be exactly that: a story. Many historians today doubt a single historical Laozi existed at all, suspecting instead that the name became a legendary peg on which later editors hung a body of wisdom sayings compiled by multiple hands over a longer span of time, some of it possibly written a century or two after Confucius rather than before him. This uncertainty is not a modern skeptical imposition on an otherwise clear record—Chinese tradition itself preserves competing and even contradictory accounts of who Laozi was.

None of this uncertainty is troubling from a Christian standpoint; Scripture nowhere requires us to have confident answers about the biography of every ancient sage, and honesty about what can and cannot be known is itself a virtue the Bible commends (Proverbs 12:22). What can be said is that the tradition associated with Laozi's name gave rise to one of the great streams of Chinese religious and philosophical life, emphasizing effortless harmony with an underlying way (the Tao) rather than the moral striving and social ritual that Confucius, whether historically contemporary with him or not, would come to represent.

Dating

Laozi is a profoundly uncertain figure historically. Traditional accounts, recorded centuries later by the historian Sima Qian (c. 100 BC), place him as an older contemporary of Confucius who served as a keeper of archives in the Zhou court before riding west on a water buffalo and vanishing from history after dictating the Tao Te Ching to a border guard. Many modern scholars doubt Laozi existed as a single historical individual at all, viewing 'Laozi' as a composite or legendary attribution for a text compiled by multiple hands, possibly as late as the 4th century BC. No firm date can be given with confidence, and the startYear above is only a rough placement within the traditional 6th-century framework.

Scripture references

• Proverbs 12:22