Yes, I think it is historical but here is why I believe Jerusalem is Babylon.
Chapter seventeen is yet another scene in Revelation of Jerusalem's judgment but in chapter seventeen we find something that is not given in the other chapters depicting this same event. In this chapter the angel provides us with more clear definitions of the symbols.
“Then one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls came and spoke with me saying, “Come here, I will show you the judgment of the great harlot who sits on many waters, with whom the kings of the earth committed acts of immorality, and those who dwell on the earth were made drunk with the wine of her immorality.”
1. The subject of the scene is judgment.
2. The object of the judgment is the “great harlot.” This is not the first time God uses the word harlot to describe a nation but he only seems to use this term to describe a once faithful nation. God said of Nineveh, “All because of the many harlotries of the harlot, the charming one, the mistress of sorceries, who sells nations by her harlotries and families by her sorceries. Behold, I am against you,” declares the LORD of hosts...” Nahum 3:4-5. Like Nineveh, Jerusalem became a harlot when she began to prefer other nations to Jehovah.
3. She sits upon many waters. This imagery is taken directly from Jeremiah 51:13 in which God pronounces his judgment upon the actual ancient city of Babylon. It is fitting that John uses this imagery in speaking of Jerusalem as Babylon the great. The “sitting upon many waters” is used by Jeremiah as a symbol depicting the wealth that Babylon had amassed as a result of trade and alliances with the other nations. Jerusalem is accused of doing the same thing with the allied nations of Rome.
4. She is guilty of immorality with the nations. Her desire was not in the Lord, it was to be like the nations around her. This desire seems to be amplified in the fact that “the kings of the earth committed acts of immorality” with her “and those who dwell on the earth were made drunk with the wine of her immorality.”
The woman sitting on the scarlet beast, 3-6
1. The woman is the harlot, Babylon, Jerusalem.
2. The beast is Rome represented in scarlet. This may be a representation of the sinful character of the beast. God has used this imagery in the past to describe the sinful conditions of Judah and Jerusalem in Isaiah 1:18. It may also be used to depict royalty.
3. The beast was full of blasphemous names. In other words, Rome was full of idolatry, irreverence and reproach against God and his people.
4. The beast had seven heads and ten horns. We will look more closely at this later from verses 9-14.
5. The woman was beautifully adorned in royal apparel. Ezekiel 16:10-14,
“I also clothed you with embroidered cloth and put sandals of porpoise skin on your feet; and I wrapped you with fine linen and covered you with silk. “I adorned you with ornaments, put bracelets on your hands and a necklace around your neck. “I also put a ring in your nostril, earrings in your ears and a beautiful crown on your head. “Thus you were adorned with gold and silver, and your dress was of fine linen, silk and embroidered cloth. You ate fine flour, honey and oil; so you were exceedingly beautiful and advanced to royalty. “Then your fame went forth among the nations on account of your beauty, for it was perfect because of My splendor which I bestowed on you,” declares the Lord GOD.”
6. Her cup was full of abominations of unclean things and immorality, Read Ezekiel 16:15-43 and see how God described the harlotry of ancient Israel. There was no difference between the behavior of ancient Israel and Israel of the first century and the fate of both were the same. She is assigned to destruction.
7. Her name is “BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND OF THE ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH.” She is the source of every type of unclean behavior. (In 11:8,she is also “the great city that symbolically is called Sodom and Egypt, where also their Lord was crucified.”)
8. She is a murderous woman. She is a destroyer of the saints. More than that, she had acquired an unrelenting appetite for destroying those whom God had sent to her. Killing the saints and the prophets had become an intoxicating addiction. “I saw the woman drunk with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the witnesses of Jesus. Therefore, behold, I am sending you prophets and wise men and scribes; some of them you will kill and crucify, and some of them you will scourge in your synagogues, and persecute from city to city, so that upon you may fall the guilt of all the righteous blood shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah, the son of Berechiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar. “Truly I say to you, all these things will come upon this generation. “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, the way a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were unwilling. “Behold, your house is being left to you desolate!” Matthew 23:34-38.