The Bamboo Annals is a compilation that comprises chronicles of reigns of the Emperors Yao and Shun and dynasties and kingdoms from the Xia, Shang, Zhou, and Jin to the Wei. It was plundered from an ancient tomb in Ji prefecture (the town of Shanbiao near the city of Weihui in modern Henan) in the fifth year of the Xianning era of the Western Jin dynasty (279 CE). The 'current' redaction is a version in the Ming dynasty Library of the Tianyi Pavilion (Pavilion of Unified Heaven) that had been edited by Fan Qin in the Ming dynasty, and a facsimile was issued by the Sibu Congkan in the Republican period. Differently from this, the 'ancient' redaction of The Bamboo Annals has no urtext and instead comprises 'compilation editions' assembled by documentalists during and subsequent to the Qing dynasty according to citations of it ranging from the Western Jin to Northern Song (some also include citations from the Lushi [Pathway of history] of the late Southern Song). The Shanghai guji chubanshe (Shanghai Classics Publishing House) edition of 1981 compiled by Fang Shiming and Wang Xiuling and titled Guben zhushu jinian jizheng (Compilatory evidence pertaining to the 'ancient' redaction of The Bamboo Annals) could be considered the most authoritative of these.

The 'current' and 'ancient' redactions of The Bamboo Annals have one clear difference, that is, in the sections recording Jin and Wei, the 'current' version employs the reigns of the Zhou rulers to outline the chronology, whereas the 'ancient' version employs the reigns of the rulers of Jin and Wei. Historians generally acknowledge that the structure of the 'ancient' redaction represents that of the edition found in the tomb, while that of the 'current' redaction was created by a later contributor, and this can be undoubtedly regarded as correct.

Other differences between the 'current' and 'ancient' versions are however not quite so simple. Some of the contents of the 'ancient' redaction are not found in the 'current' redaction or have important discrepancies with the 'current' redaction. In the Qing dynasty, the principal reasons why the Siku quanshu zongmu tiyao (Annotated bibliography of the complete book repositories of the Four Treasuries) demarcated the 'current' version as spurious stem from these discrepancies. In fact, strictly speaking, the 'ancient' redaction is not a single text, but instead a polytextual combination of at least two separate editorial lineages: one cited by the compilers of Shuijing zhu (Commentary on The Book of Rivers) and Taiping Yulan (Imperial readings of the Taiping era), and the other cited by the Zhengyi (Correct meanings) and Suoyin (Seeking out the concealed) texts pertaining to the Shiji (Records of the Grand Historian). There are clear differences between the two lineages.

According to research carried out by recent scholars Zhu Xizu, Fang Shiming, and Wang Xiuling, we can ascertain that one redaction of The Bamboo Annals (probably the one cited by Shuijing zhu and Taiping Yulan) was originally compiled in the era of Emperor Wu of Jin by Xun Xu and He Qiao, while the other (probably the one cited in the Suoyin to the Shiji) was a revised redaction by Shu Xi made in the era of Emperor Hui of Jin. After clarifying the differences between these two lineages, we discover that the 'current' redaction of The Bamboo Annals is fundamentally identical to that of Xun Xu and He Qiao but substantially at variance to that of Shu Xi. Abiding by the principles of the study of editions, the differences between the 'current' version of The Bamboo Annals and the 'ancient' version do not in themselves demonstrate its spurious nature and can only demonstrate that it belongs to a particular editorial lineage.