‘The Place Which the Lord Shall Choose,’ the ‘Temple City’ and the ‘Camp’ in 11QT a

All religious groups of Jewish society in the Second Temple period were faced with the need to resolve a basic contradiction. The model of sanctity in the book of Leviticus distinguishes two levels of sanctity: (a) the area of the Tabernacle and (b) that of the other tribes around it. The book of Deuteronomy, however, recognizes one single focus of sanctity — “the place which the Lord shall choose” — which is not linked to the model of the desert encampment.
|There are various attempts in the literature of the Second Temple period to resolve this contradiction. To my mind, the Temple Scrolla expresses the view that the “chosen place” is Jerusalem, which was chosen as a permanent substitute for the Temple and the Temple court, implying that the future temple would occupy the entire area of the city: Jerusalem is a “holy encampment” and a “temple city.”