I first heard this on NPR's Speaking of Faith, and understand that it comes from Louis Carol's "Through the Looking Glass". This quotation  is not only representative of  religion, but also of our understanding of time. Past, present, and future.

The single most valued fact of history is that it gives us our understanding of who we are and where we are going. Without knowing the past events and how they shaped us, we would be unable to begin to understand each step we take each day. This is not to say that there is much history that we can be certain of... for there are many reasons to not tell the truth to the populous.

What appears to be true is that we feel we are within this event we call existence and we understand past events and with some skill we can predict the future to some probability of certainty. 

In order to truly understand who and what someone like Napoleon was, you would need to know what France is in the context of all history. Similarly to understand a belief in Jesus Christ you would need to understand not only the history of the Jews, but a history of all civilization and how the Jewish people were formed within it.    

Our history is a Western history that holds influence from the east dating back 10,000 years. From Zarathustra, to the Egyptians, from Greece to China we have borrowed from each other to become our modern day humanity.

What could be more central to our existence than a true understanding of our history. 

This history is not so separate from us, there are archetypal memories that are in our genetics. Our motivations, intentions, dreams, and fears come from this history.

History and Christ  

egypt

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