Unlike simple concordances, Biblia Patristica meticulously tracks how the Church Fathers quoted, paraphrased, and alluded to Scripture. However, users must understand an important limitation: , and the criteria for identifying allusions are quite broad. As one scholar explains, a search for Acts 3.21, for example, may produce entries where the phrase "ἀποκατάστασις πάντων" appears—even when the author is referencing the Origenist doctrine of universal restoration rather than consciously alluding to the biblical text. As the project's own documentation cautions, Biblia Patristica is an "inventory of citations and possible allusions"—comprehensive precisely because the compilers have "not ruled out any text that might conceivably be interpreted as an allusion".

While Biblia Patristica is the premier resource for biblical citations in the Fathers, it is not the only free tool available to patristics researchers. Here are a few others worth knowing:

As mentioned above, it is the premier search engine for citations.

The print/PDF versions can be confusing because they use highly abbreviated Latin and French. Follow this flow: Find the Book/Verse: Locate the biblical book at the top of the page. Identify the Author: Look for the author codes (e.g., for Clement, for Tertullian). Note the Citation: