Since the 1960s, The I Ching or Yijing by Richard Wilhelm and Cary F. Baynes has been a standard translation of the Chinese classic Yijing. To many readers in the Anglophone world, the Wilhelm-Baynes translation successfully renders the Yijing into a “book of wisdom” that addresses contemporary issues such as alienation, family structure, gender roles, and social inequality. Nonetheless, since the mid-1970s, scholars have been dissatisfied with this “book of wisdom” approach that suppresses the authentic voice of the Yijing text. Rather than looking for contemporary relevance, they have turned their attention to the different layers of the Yijing text and the different commentarial traditions to render the text. This article examines the origin and development of this “historical turn” that decidedly transforms the image of Yijing in the Anglophone world. The article begins with a discussion of the social-intellectual milieu of the 1960s that gave rise to North American scholars’ interest in discovering China’s historical path. Then, it compares three distinctive approaches to historicizing the Yijing: (1) uncovering the complexity of the original text based on recent archeological discoveries (e.g., Edward Shaughnessy and Richard Kuhn); (2) comparing the different commentarial methods of interpreting the Yijing text (e.g., Kidder Smith, Richard John Lynn, Joseph Adler, Tze-ki Hon, and Harrington); and (3) tracing the travels of the Yijing around the world (e.g., Richard Smith). The article argues that although different in many regards, these three approaches highlight the importance of Yijing in times of crisis, whether personal, national, or global.