That is hardly surprising, as priests and scribes lived onsite according to their order of service, so necessarily there has to be living quarters...
I would further add the term "cloistered life" is related to the architecture with respect to religious buildings.
Yes, I know what it tends to mean NOW, But this is from before youse guys running off with the word, which seems to have occurred largely in medieval times... to my knowledge, in architecture, a cloister is an enclosed peristyle or colonnade with a covered walkway surrounding a garth or quadrangle. What the text seems to largely be talking about is the peristyle surrounding the common area (Courtyard of the Gentiles) of the Temple Mount, referred to as the Porch... This ran around the west, east, and south sides of the Temple with a widened portico to the north, and a dividing wall in the middle.
Could it mean a separate cloistered courtyard? Perhaps the Courtyard of the Men of Israel? I guess it could, but the image I see is storming the Temple using the peristyle as cover - They were fighting toward the Temple under the common colonnade.
But all of this wallows into a long and difficult discourse in etymology, on an Hebrew/Aramaic document translated into Greek, written by a Hebrew, to a Latin Roman... Said document having been undoubtedly 'Christianized', so is suspect wrt it's original content... which in the end is all rendered moot, as living quarters were indeed necessary onsite for priests and scribes, and without direct evidence otherwise, fulfills the need for a religious 'cloister' without the necessity of vestal virgins.
