Editio Critica Maior is a critical edition of the Greek New Testament being produced by the Institut für neutestamentliche Textforschung

Institute for New Testament Textual Research

The Institute for New Testament Textual Research at the University of Münster, Westphalia, Germany, is an institute for the investigation of the text of the New Testament. The INTF was founded in Münster in 1959 by Professor Kurt Aland , the first director of the Institute...

. It is a work (in progress) in multiple volumes, and is intended to cite a more complete list of variant readings than can be incorporated in a manual edition. The University describes the edition as follows:

The Editio Critica Maior documents the Greek textual history of the first millennium based on Greek manuscripts of special relevance for the textual tradition, on older translations and on quotations of the New Testament in ancient Christian literature. Based on genealogical studies of the material prepared for the first time with this completeness the text is being newly reconstructed.

The selection of manuscripts rests on an analysis of the entire primary tradition. Every selected manuscript is entered into a database with all its readings and registered in the critical apparatus. The edition thus offers information to answer continuative questions: How does the text change in the course of history and why? How was a text received in early Christianity?"

Currently, the volumes include the General epistles

General epistles

General epistles are books in the New Testament in the form of letters. They are termed "general" because for the most part their intended audience seems to be Christians in general rather than individual persons or congregations as is the case with the Pauline epistles...

, and incorporate only twenty-five changes from the text used in the United Bible Societies

United Bible Societies

The United Bible Societies is a worldwide association of Bible societies. In 1946 delegates from 13 countries formed the UBS, as an effort to coordinate the activities of the bible societies. The first headquarters were London and in Geneva...

' fourth edition of the Greek New Testament and the twenty-seventh edition of the Nestle-Aland. The editors of both single volume New Testament

New Testament

The New Testament is the second major division of the Christian biblical canon, the first such division being the much longer Old Testament....

s will incorporate these minor updates in future editions.