Just a quick look at significant gate-keeping within my personal memory.

Biblical scholarship has long been more than a hobby for me, though less than formal academic scholarship. Still, curiosity has a way of pushing a person into deep water, so in the late 1960s I began gathering whatever material I could find.

One of the major issues then was the public release of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

It seems odd now, but soon after the scrolls were discovered, access became tightly controlled by a very small circle of scholars. The stated purpose was careful and accurate translation, which was understandable to a point. But decade after decade passed, while only fragments and selective reports reached the public.

Periodically, small articles discussed new findings, but the scrolls themselves remained largely inaccessible. More than forty years after their discovery, and even after several of the original scholars had died, much of the material was still effectively locked away.

At the time, I subscribed to Biblical Archaeology Society’s magazine, Biblical Archaeology Review, when it made the bold decision to publish unauthorized photographs of the scrolls.

It was a major rupture in the system.

Suddenly, the old structure of academic control looked far less convincing. Scholars around the world could examine the texts directly. Serious researchers checked earlier translations, debates followed, corrections were made—and civilization somehow survived the experience. All this occurred before the modern Internet made mass distribution effortless.

That did not mean gate-keeping disappeared from biblical scholarship. Far from it. There remained a deeply Euro-centric focus shaping much of the conversation.

Serious scholars certainly knew of the importance of early Ethiopian Christian scripture, but Ge’ez had not been widely translated, and in many circles Ethiopia received little more than a respectful nod before attention returned to the familiar Protestant-versus-Catholic framework. Even the Greek and Russian Orthodox traditions often sat outside the primary Western discussion.

What changed much of this was not sudden institutional humility, but the expansion of the Internet itself.

Not only did the Dead Sea Scrolls become widely available, but many other neglected religious texts also surfaced into broader public awareness. Not “lost,” exactly. More often ignored, untranslated, inaccessible, or simply left outside the dominant scholarly spotlight.

Even within the last five years, I have noticed a significant increase in serious scholarship surrounding the Ethiopian canon of 81 books. There is now far more material available than at any previous point in my lifetime.

Quite a bit of it still sits unread on my shelf.