You can’t really know a religion from the outside, and you can’t simply “re-create” it to your liking. That is to say, you can know everything about a religion—its history, iconography, scripture, etc.—but all of that will remain intellectual, mere information, so long as your own soul is not at risk. To have faith in a religion, any religion, is to accept at some primary level that its particular language of words and symbols says something true about reality.
