BY THE TIME I LEARN ALL THE ANSWERS, THEY CHANGE ALL THE QUESTIONS

Remember your old history class tests...? Sorry for bringing that up...! But if you do, you now realize how many of "the answers" have changed. Why? Because history, my fellow student, is no more than a moving target.

And yet, there isn't a politician, general or televangelist who doesn't claim history proves their point. So while Santayana advises, "Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it," Huxley trumps him: "That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons that history has to teach."

It all comes down to what Uncle Harry once exasperated to me: "Just about the time I've learned all the answers, they change all the damn questions."

Good thing to remember when someone starts quoting history to you. Including your history teacher [a little embarrassment I carry with me after 40 dogmatic years in the classroom]. You see, new versions and visions of history keep slapping you in the face every new year, and you can laugh them off only so long. Eventually -- like the horsemen eventually had to stop laughing off the automobile -- you have to come to terms. [Often reluctantly, though, as we still can't help speaking of our automobiles in terms of horsepower.]

Three current examples make the point. Seal the deal. Should make any modern-day dogmatist blush:

* All that White-European bravado about discovering "a New World" now has to accommodate with the fact there was little "new" about it. By the time Columbus landed, there were already millions of people and hundreds of cities thriving on both continents. Without any outside help, thank you very much

* All those Biblical Minimalists who cropped up in the 20th C to dismiss the Bible as pure allegory with no historical evidence have been stuck lately with archaeological discoveries of stone records in Egypt describing the Hebrews, and in Israel marking the names of King David, the home of Peter, and the sayings of Jesus

* Then this very Easter Week, TIME MAGAZINE opts to feature a popular new Evangelical ministry which preaches a Christianity without its traditional heaven and hell

So some advice to today's legions of cable pundits and network Sunday interviewers. You have to promise on your honor to stop saying "history teaches us..." At least until you've gone back to check with your blushing old history teachers!