^{Christ with Arms Folded (Rembrandt)}     

     You weren't likely around in the years just prior and subsequent to Jesus' murder at Jerusalem. The deal is that for years before and after, under the thumb of the most oppressive Western regime until the Nazis, Roman-occupied Jews knew of dozens, hundreds, thousands of would-be saviors, momentary-mystics rushing out to the Judean desert, starving themselves silly and into hallucenogenic ecstasies, then rushing back to the city walls crying, weeping, moaning, WOE TO JERUSALEM! and the like (see Josephus, for one reliable report). In most cases, those trying to get some sleep hurled rocks and stones and garbage over the walls. Some, maddened themselves by the nearly continuous howling, went outside the walls and beat hell out of the self-annointed. These fellas' spiritual-urgency just couldn't match the typical pressed-for-restful nights-Judean's need for sound sleep and routinely got themselves pummelled, thrashed, and, on occasions, killed.

     The Galileean Wisdom-Teacher, of course, got it worse than most, and sadly, too, for the man had a great deal of Good to teach. (As if we'd listen.)

^{Road by the Walls of ancient Jerusalem}

     Fast-forward to the modern Israeli State.

     The Self-Made-Messiah Phenomenon never really went away. Rome was brutal but never brutal enough---nor is any vicious government--to quell that in the human spirit that makes some believe they're God's Answer.

     Shortly after the founding of modern Jerusalem's first comprehensive psychiatric hospital, its staff realized that the ancient act never really ended--people still flung themselves out into the wilderness, and lacking food and proper fluids and for days, stumbled back to the city's gates proclaiming they, each of them, was One with The One, and that All Israel Had Better Repent.

^{The Judean Desert}

     A ward for these benighted fellows was begun, but when asked their names--they were often found sans anything remotely like valid IDs (nor with families willing to own up to them)--and they were hustled, moaning and pointing and admonitioning, indoors...they, most of them, gave over that their names were...what else? Jesus Christ.

     That, of course, wouldn't do. Patients must be identified at least within a range of accuracy. The hospital decided to call them all Jesus Christ (if only to gain a foothold on cooperation) and then, to distinguish among them with anything that would make paper-work and medicating less nightmarish, labeled their doors, intially, in this manner:

          Jesus A. Christ...Jesus B. Christ....through Z...and the scheme has been multiplied upon in the decades since. AA. BB. CC. DD.... ... ... A1. A1a...you can see their charts now, yes?

     Now, why the "H." stuck, had such enduring, universal appeal, no one appears to know. It's one of those ageless questions wrapped in Mystery. No one in Rome or at Jerusalem seems to know. At least no one's saying.