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• When the Dead Sea Scrolls were first discovered, the State of Israel (formed in 1948) did not exist, and the manuscript fragments came into the hands of academics associated with the Catholic Church, where they remained for the remainder of the 20th century, generally with no access to anyone else outside of the elite group of academics who kept tight restrictions on access to the scrolls. It is only in very recent times, with the help of Israel and certain notable scholars, that access to the Dead Sea Scrolls has finally been available to others.
• Since the Catholic Church was so heavily involved with the initial access to the Dead Sea Scrolls, the early theories about the origins of the Dead Sea Scrolls rested on Qumran being a scriptorium where scrolls were copied out, much like a Medieval monastery, which was a concept that the Catholic Church understood.