• Didache
• Didache 13:3 / LXX Deuteronomy 18:4
• 1 Clement
• 1 Clement 29:2 / LXX Deuteronomy 32:8

The centrality of the Bible to the whole patristic reality is something that is not generally recognized. As written revelation, the Bible quickly became the exclusive proof-text for establishing the main features of Christian identity. Written in vernacular Greek, the New Testament itself was the work of the church. Under the aegis of apostolic authority, the New Testament texts presented God as speaking to early Christian generations in their native language, Koine Greek, the lingua franca of that time in the Mediterranean world as today English is around the planet. Linguistic immediacy was even experienced with the Old Testament, because it was inherited in the Greek version, the Septuagint (LXX).

One of the main challenges for the earliest Christian interpreters of Scripture would consist in stressing such an immediacy. They would reformulate LXX sentences, too obviously marked by the Hebrew original, in Koine Greek and in a stylistic fashion more palatable to Late Antique readers.