The passages matching the transmitted Daode jing, moreover, are not self-evident either, nor is their relation to the complete text. For example, the Guodian version begins with what is chapter 19 today and strongly advises the elimination of knowledge, distinctions, artistry, profit, transformation and deliberation, instead of advocating such mainstream Confucian virtues as sageliness, humanity and righteousness condemned in the later text. Does this mean that the early 'Daoists' were less anti-Confucian? Or did they have a different understanding of what causes the ills of culture? How and when did their vision change-between 300 and 168 B.C.E.-and why? Then again, the main focus of the Bamboo Laozi is the practice of self-cultivation and the proper governing of the state, to be attained either separately or in conjunction. Does this mean that we have here an early version of the Huang-Lao teachings prevalent in the Han dynasty? Or should we see 'Daoism' as more of a self-cultivation movement, from which political expertise arose secondarily?
Many questions are therefore still unclear, intensified by the fact that many characters on the bamboo slips were unknown or only semi-legible and have been tentatively identified with the help of the transmitted version. Nor do we as yet know whether the Daode jing was in fact written by one single author, the sixth-century philosopher Laozi, or came about as an accumulation of sayings that grew over time and were edited by a group. We do know that a good portion of the text existed around 300 B.C.E., considerably closer to the 'historical' Laozi than thought possible, that its content was less acrimonious towards the Confucians than later, and that at least on occasion it was grouped with cosmological and Confucian documents. Still, there is much research and examination to be undertaken before the information found at Guodian can be considered secure and can enter the established textbooks of our field.