Is the Babylon of Revelation Rome or Jerusalem? 379 She holds that Babylon is Jerusalem since it became a prostitute in its political alliance with the Romans, represented as “the many waters” (the Kittim of Qumran literature) upon which the Harlot is sitting (17,1.15). The Beast from the sea is Vespasian, who “was”, when was standing high in Nero’s favour; “is not”, when he loses his favour; and “is to come”, when he will be sent by him to quell the Jewish revolt in A.D. 67. The Beast from the land, instead, is Flavius Josephus, since he greeted Vespasian “prophetically” as the future emperor (cf. the epithet, “pseudo-prophet” given to the second Beast in Rev), and because he accepted the mark and the name of the “Beast” when he accepted the nomen “Flavius” from the imperial family. The anti-Jerusalem interpretation was supported subsequently by E. Corsini in 1980 and by his disciple E. Lupieri in 1999. According to Corsini, the Beast from the Sea is Rome and/or the Roman empire, which is a symbol of every corrupt centre of political power. The Beast from the land is Jerusalem and/or the Jewish world, which had become a “Synagogue of Satan”. The two horns of the Beast are the Law and the Prophets, interpreted in a material and mundane sense by the corrupted Jerusalem. The two powers, the political one of Rome and the religious of Jerusalem, are by now allied, and such a “monstrous alliance”, according to Corsini, is paradigmatically represented in the allegory of the Harlot sitting on the Beast (Rev 17,3). Finally, the rebellion of the Beast against Babylon and the destruction of it (Rev 17,16) are the Jewish revolt and the destruction of Jerusalem by the Roman armies in the years 66-70 A.D., when the two allies separate and then clash in a mortal duel. In 1983 A.J. Beagley dedicated his doctoral dissertation, published in 1987, to the Church’s enemies in Rev (30). Although Rev possibly alludes also to the Roman persecution, according to Beagley, Rev 2,9 and 3,9 say clearly that the persecution that worried John of Patmos was the Jewish persecution. Accordingly, the Great Harlot sitting on the Beast is an image of the alliance between Jerusalem and Rome, where Rome is the secular executive arm for the attacks of Judaism against Jesus’ disciples. A further supporter of the anti-Jewish interpretation is R. de Water (2000)(31). In his interpretation, the Beast from the sea and the seven (30) BEAGLEY, The ‘Sitz im Leben’ of the Apocalypse, 31, 110, 112. (31) DE WATER, “Reconsidering the Beast from the Sea”, 245-261.