“The Biographies of the Reasonable Officials” (“Hsun-li lieh-chuan”), chapter 117 of the Shih chi (Records of the Grand Historian) by Ssu-tna Ch'ien (145–c. 85 B.C.), has been deemed a forgery by a number of scholars including Ts'ui Shih (1852–1924). The objections raised by these scholars are reexamined in this paper along with the texts of “The Reasonable Officials” and its companion, “The Biographies of the Harsh Officials” (“K'u-li lieh-chuan”). The narrative structure and historical accuracy of “The Reasonable Officials” are contrasted with those of “The Harsh Officials” to reveal still more flaws in the former. But the basic concept that a chapter in the Shih chi flawed by such errors must be from the hand of a forger is challenged, since time constraints on Ssu-ma Ch'ien would have been greater than those on later imitators and it is likely that without such constraints the obvious problems in this chapter would have been avoided. Finally, an alternative solution to the integral problems in “The Reasonable Officials” is suggested: namely, that the text is based closely on previously compiled materials on reasonable officials taken from the Han imperial archives. This hypothesis, while it cannot be irrefutably substantiated, would resolve almost all of the questions scholars have traditionally raised concerning “The Reasonable Officials,”