In Chinese philology, the Ancient Script Classics (Chinese: 古文經; pinyin: Gǔwén Jīng; Wade–Giles: Kuwen Ching) refer to some versions of the Five Classics discovered during the Han dynasty, written in a script that predated the one in use during the Han dynasty, and produced before the burning of the books.
The "ancient script texts" were the ones that off and on since the late 2nd and during the 1st century BC had turned up, some discovered in the walls of Confucius's residence, or in Warring States period graves.
The "current script texts" portray Confucius as a prophet or "uncrowned king" that should have received the Mandate of Heaven.
They believed history was caused by human actions and viewed the Son of Heaven (the emperor of China) as the axis mundi whose will was absolute.
They emphasized the sage-like as opposed to the prophet-like characteristics of Confucius, thereby making him look more like the earlier sages who founded and ruled the Zhou dynasty or even the still more archaic states which preceded it.
And yet, these archaic sage-kings are shown ruling China with a bureaucratic apparatus peculiarly like that available to Han dynasty rulers, and hence by methods which strikingly echoed those of putative enemies of Wang Mang, the modernists.
While he was very influential, he was unable to unseat the Current Script Texts orthodoxy though the issue became moot when both schools disappeared after the collapse of the Han.
Michael Nylan has proved that the issue itself was an artificial projection of the mid-Han problematic onto the early Han realities.