Person · 3210–3282 AM · 551 BCE — 479 BCE
Confucius 孔子
Chinese thinker: ritual, filial duty, the Analects
He is a contemporary of the building of the Second Temple—on the academic count; on the Seder Olam reckoning he would live in the years of Ezra and the men of the Great Assembly. The coincidence in time with the Greek thinkers and with the last prophets is what Karl Jaspers called the "axial age"—a contested notion, but the juxtaposition on the timeline speaks for itself.
His birth is given as 551 or 552; the death in 479 is firm.
Sources
Scholarship
- Britannica, “Confucius” — the years 551–479, with a one-year divergence at birth
Basis: documents and evidence.