Avitus of Vienne is the author of one of the most important biblical epics in late antiquity. His opus called De spiritalis historiae gestis consists of five books. So far, research has largely not been able to explain the connection between the individual books, though this coherence is clearly indicated by the alternation of ‚sin stories’ and ‚order stories’. Thus, the elimination of order by sin paradoxically poses the structural principle of the entire poem. The research project aims at verifying this assumption by analysing the history of theology, exegesis, genre, motif and literary reception of the epic with regard to philological observations connected to the idea of ‘Godly order’ and ‘sinful chaos’.