hill outside the city walls called golgotha, which means the place of the skull. a site that today is covered by the ornate church of the holy sepulcher. in jesus' day this holy place was a killing field where a team of roman soldiers awaited their victim and quickly set about their grisly task. >> the members of it would hold their legs across their body, their arms, while they nailed the nails into their hands. >> though some victims lasted a week, zugibe calculates that jesus spent about six hours on the cross. then it was finished. >> if i were to write a death certificate, i would say the cause of death was due to shock, which causes cardiogenic shock or the failure of the heart as a pump. and that would be the cause of death. >> while politics had a hand in jesus' death, scholars say so, too, did prophecy.