How to Work Your Way Back to the Past: Be Like the Chronicler

In my humble opinion, time travel (physically journeying to the past or future) is not causally possible. That is, it's not possible given what we know about the laws of physics and how time potentially works. Nevertheless, there is a sense in which we can travel back to the past by studying it: I realize that one can dwell on the past and visit past events in that way. Yet in order to work our way back to the past through a study of history, we need certain skills and tools.

1) One must develop literacy of the ancient world to a satisfactory degree. Just like it takes work and time to acquire literacy in any language, if one is going to develop literacy with respect to the ancient world, it will take hard work and time. For instance, you will need to learn the relevant language(s) whether it's Hebrew-Aramaic, Greek, Syriac or Latin and that might require a guide. That guide could be a book or person, or both.

2) Historians study variegated facets of the past: such studies involve numismatics, examining ancient cultures and their practices (i.e., anthropology) and analyzing texts. Historians must study a variety of texts and interrogate them while archaeologists carry out digs. To study the past well, one must learn about historical methodology and the art of writing history (i.e., historiography). Furthermore, what about ancient culture? Learning cultural practices is another challenge to studying the past.

3) What about objectivity? The Roman historian Tacitus said, "sine ira et studio" (without anger and passion). In other words, the historian is supposed to be levelheaded, objective, and free from prejudice (i.e., be disinterested). Well, that is the idea anyway although it's not possible to be completely objective. That notion is an antiquated relic of the Enlightenment. Nevertheless, historians should strive for objectivity as they attempt to reconstruct the past.

4) See https://www.historians.org/about-aha-and-membership/aha-history-and-archives/historical-archives/why-study-history-(1998)

This link contains plenty of helpful tips.

Compare Proverbs 22:20-21; Ecclesiastes 12:10; Luke 1:1-4.

P.S. The so-called "father of history" is Herodotus and the father of church history is Eusebius of Caesarea.

Six Excellent Church History Sources

 1. Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian Tradition, Five Volumes (The University of Chigago Press).

See https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/series/CT.html

2. Everett Ferguson, Church History, Two Volumes (Zondervan)

See https://zondervanacademic.com/products/church-history-volume-one-from-christ-to-the-pre-reformation

3. W.H.C. Frend, The Rise of Christianity (Fortress Press)

SEe https://www.augsburgfortress.org/store/product/9780800619312/The-Rise-of-Christianity

4. R.P.C. Hanson,The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God: The Arian Controversy, 318-381 (T & T Clark)

See https://www.amazon.com/Search-Christian-Doctrine-God-Controversy/dp/080103146X

5. Edmund Fortman, The Triune God (Wipf and Stock)

See https://www.amazon.com/Triune-God-Historical-Doctrine-Trinity/dp/1579102239/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=edmund+fortman+trinity&qid=1629060655&s=books&sr=1-1

6. Harold O. J. Brown, Heresies: Heresy and Orthodoxy in the History of the Church (Hendrickson)

See https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1565633652/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=ligoniminist-20&linkCode=as2&camp=217145&creative=399369&creativeASIN=1565633652

Too many great works to mention: these six are just the tip of the iceberg.