Off the top of my head and I could be off here - there's a technique that involves placing the engine at top dead center (as marked on the flywheel), then hooking up a test light to one of the distributor wires (I believe the signal wire to the coil) and rotating the ignition to where the light just turns on - this would be called 'static timing'. This should allow you to start the engine and then, with a timing light, set it to the proper spec ("dynamic timing"). But as I said, I am just going off memory, it's been some years since I had to do this on one of my cars.
I would check the technical manual, to which you have access and, if it's not described there, I would look in the Haynes manual for our cars, that is sure to contain a relevant procedure.
