More on the Hebrew Bible: A Critical Edition

RONALD HENDEL: A New Critical Edition of the Hebrew Bible (Bible and Interpretation). Excerpt:

The HBCE ["The Hebrew Bible: A Critical Edition”] text will not reproduce a single manuscript (as is the case with the other critical editions, BHQ and HUBP), but will approximate the manuscript that was the latest common ancestor of all the extant manuscripts. This “earliest inferable text” is called the archetype. This is not identical to the original text (however one defines this elusive term), but is the earliest recoverable text of a particular book. To be more precise, the HBCE critical text will approximate the corrected archetype, since the archetype will have some scribal errors that can be remedied.

Background here.