Just got back from an awesome first session on the Book of Revelations by Fr Ambrose Vaz (biblical scholar, seminary lecturer, etc etc) in St Igs. I was actually quite psyched about this seeing as how Revelations is the most misunderstood/misinterpreted/arcane/obtuse text in the Bible. You can tell by the crowd that was there that they were expecting great things too… my new lawyer friend pointed out to me several prominent lawyers, judges, wives of judges. Whoa. Anyway…seriously, it’s uber cool, especially if you, like me, are an armchair wannabe-theologian or generally just a geeky Catholic/Christian. The terms tossed about were just slightly intimidating- Eschatology, Chialism, Dipensationalism anyone?
I especially liked his quick run-through of hermeneutics (biblical interpretation) in which he highlighted that some commentators put too much regard to Revelations as prophetic of the end times, forgetting that the text must have had a present-time meaning to the people whom John wrote the book for at that time. Revelations thus has three levels of relevancy: to the people during John’s time, to us now, to the future and the second coming of Christ. He also emphsized that John used symbolic references to convey a literal truth. Symbols point to a reality, they themselves are not the reality- we must moved from the symbol/sign to the reality. In other words, the prophecies predict literal events, though their descriptions do not portray the events literally. There was also a distinction in the meaning of Time. In Greek, there are two words for time:
Kairos- eg. a “time/kairos” to act, independent of minutes, hours, days..
Chronos- a measure of time
Both translated to “Time” in English.
Most of Revelations used Kairos when referring to Time. In other words, the numbers used should not be taken literally as a modern measurement of time, there are more complex meanings to each number used. Fr Vaz cautioned us not to get too caught up in the minutiae and forget why Revelations was written in the first place- it was above all a book written to give assurance, not fear. It’s central message was of faithful endurance as it was written in trying times. It promised that good would triumph over evil and that we should fear nothing.
Anyway that was just a teeny tiny piece of what he said. Come with me if you wanna go for it! It’s 12 sessions in all- so 11 left and will be on Thursday at 8pm. Next week is postponed because it’s Holy Thursday but it’s on for the most part. It’s really exciting. I’m grinning geekily right now. 
