The Editio Critica Maior provides the full range of resources necessary for scholarly research in establishing the text and reconstructing the history of the New Testament text during its first thousand years.

Resources include:

• all the variants found in the selected Greek manuscripts and in citations by the Greek Fathers,
• the evidence of the three most important early versions (Latin, Coptic, and Syriac) where they witness to variants in the Greek text,
• the evidence of other versions (Armenian, Georgian, Old Church Slavonic, and Ethiopic) where they witness to variants in the Greek text and to the extent they are available in editions.

The text of the present edition has been established afresh on the basis of these resources.

The Editio Critica Maior of the Catholic Letters is available in two volumes:

• The first volume (Volume IV/1), Text, contains the Greek text of the books of the Catholic Letters (James; First and Second Peter; First, Second, and Third John; and the Letter of Jude) along with a clearly structured, extensive text-critical apparatus.
• The second volume (Volume IV/2), Supplementary Material, lists all relevant New Testament manuscripts with descriptions of their textual character in light of the total body of evidence. The manuscripts and manuscript groups are arranged by their role in the development of the text, providing readers with a broader perspective on text-critical issues and promoting greater clarity about how decisions on variant readings are made.

The volume is edited by Barbara Aland, Kurt Aland, Gerd Mink, Holger Strutwolf, and Klaus Wachtel.