This study is concerned with the way in which exploratory or 'heuristic' science developed in the early centuries of the Christian Church and became an integral part of biblical interpretation. The great theologians sought to understand the biblical foundations of the Faith through new modes of careful inquiry in which they tried to penetrate the inner truth and structure of a subject in order that it might disclose and interpret itself to them. In this activity, biblical interpretation, and theological and scientific inquiry were closely intertwined. Patristic hermeneutics drew upon and influenced basis scientific questioning which both transformed biblical interpretation and left its mark upon the whole history of thought.