The studies included in the collective monograph highlight the most important problems of reception of authoritative texts, teachings, concepts from late antiquity to the beginning of the XVII century. The authors analyze the methods and genres of interpretation on the materials of poorly studied monuments of philosophical and theological thought, such as the phenomena of apocryphal literature of the first centuries AD, patristic creations, examples of educational and doctrinal literature of the Middle Ages, works of late medieval mystics, Byzantine theological works, works of German humanists and Protestant writers of the Reformation era.