Textual Criticism — Reconstructing and Establishing Authoritative Texts

Textual criticism is a systematic philological method for identifying, comparing, and evaluating variant readings across multiple manuscript or print witnesses of a text in order to reconstruct the most accurate version of the original — or the author's intended — text. Applied since antiquity to classical, biblical, and literary works, it remains the foundational editorial method in classical studies, biblical scholarship, medieval studies, and critical editing of literary works.