Starting from the considerations on the complex notions of the original text, the article speaks of some antecedents of the textual criticism practiced in antiquity. The quest for the original text of the Old Testament began more than two thousand years ago. A summary of the previous critical editions of the Hebrew Bible places the ongoing project of the Biblia Hebraica Quinta (BHQ) in its historical and methodological context. The experience of the author in his work on 2 Kgs illustrates the importance of BHQ for historians and Biblical scholars, as well as its possible consequences for hermeneutics and theology.