Why study history to search for truth?

Answer 1

A:The study of history helps us know the truth about our past. It helps us to know what really happened, compared to legends such as those about King Arthur and the Round Table or the establishment of Rome by Romulus and Remus. In a biblical context, it enables us to form an informed view as to how reliable The Bible really is as history.

We can rely on the Bible alone and therefore believe all the accounts about Abraham, Moses, the bloody conquest of the Canaanites, King David and the occasional worship by the Israelites of heathen gods. Or we can learn the history of the Bronze Age and the Iron Age and discover that the Hebrew people were really Canaanites who migrated from the region of the rich coastal cities and settled peacefully in the hitherto sparsely populated Canaanite hinterland. These people only developed their traditions of a glorious past long after they had forgotten their real origins. We can also learn that recent research by scholars interested in religio-historical questions, generally assumes that the religion of pre-exilic Israel and Judah is to be characterised as thoroughly polytheistic.

History is not an exact science and the views of historians can change as more evidence is gathered and analysed, so we should not regard each and every history book as unchallengeable truth. However, a study of history will lead us closer to the truth, as things really happened. It has been said that those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it. Or, like the early Hebrews, by ignoring history we could develop our own traditions about our past, with scarcely a hint of truth.