No, haven't read it. Numerous Church Fathers have commented on the Apocalypse. Why not read their writings, instead of an interpretation of them by someone else?
I disagree with this strongly.
It is indeed true that numerous Church Fathers have commented on the apocalypse, but Patristic witness is varied in its approach, and in the concerns it represents. Scholarly work in recent years has drawn together a good many of these sources to provide a picture that was indiscernible before.
So, for example, in order to wrestle with ideas of the apocalypse, it is extremely helpful to understand such things as Pythagorean number theory (as in Origen's work, for example), the idea of the Six Ages and how the age was calculated (as represented differently by Augustine and earlier, Antiochene writers, for example), the Easter computus (as in the Chronicon Paschale), and so the liturgical calendar, etc., etc.
Of course, it is not necessary to be expert in all these things, but to say that one should just read the Fathers is setting a person up for a real slog. Good contemporary scholarship has revealed a great deal about the logic and background to Patristic understandings of the apocalypse, and we do well to read that work as well as delving into the Fathers themselves.
