This study aims to examine the way in which Agamben uses early Christian writings, particularly the Church Fathers, to emphasise the messianic dimension they proclaim and the historical caesura constituted by their contribution to the theological-political sphere. The Fathers, as interpreters of Paul and following in his footsteps, reconfigure the notion of messianic time. But their hermeneutics could also be seen as a return to a system that mitigates the radicalism of the apostle in his desire for major messianic transformation. Agamben draws on many key figures from both the Greek side, with Origen, Irenaeus, Didymus, John Chrysostom, Cyril of Alexandria and Theodoret of Cyrrhus, and the Latin side, with Marius Victorinus, Ticonius and Jerome. But behind this mass of names, he identifies personalities and specifies specific contributions with personalised analyses (for example, the boring Marius Victorinus as opposed to Ticonius, an extremely interesting character). The vision of the Fathers proposed by Agamben is therefore very differentiated, especially since their hermeneutics can lend themselves to divergent interpretations, depending on whether they adopt more or less the radicalism of the apostle in his desire to offer a major messianic transformation. With this in mind, also interesting is the messianic reading that some Christian authors can offer of the alphabet as a recapitulation of history and messianic tension between the beginning and the end, the alpha and the omega. These considerations would in some respects oppose the perspectives opened up by Agamben in his critique of letters as the only possibility of thinking about the relationship between voice and language. They reveal a clear tension between the prospect of radical rupture, developed by Agamben, and the defence of a more traditional form of continuity offered by Christian authors to represent the drama of history.