Interesting THC show on crucifixion

I have been nearly fed up with The History Channel recently, but I saw an interesting show today.

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Unlike the previous conjectures about how crucifixion causes death - respiratory failure, etc - this new twist on things has been based on human experimentation on live subjects. They make the case the NONE of the physical stresses of being hung on a cross, even with minor injuries such as nail punctures or superficial cuts, would have resulted in death as quickly as the scriptural account.

Historical accounts show victims lasting up to nine days, even when they were crucified in the original fashion, which was simply being impaled on a single stick. Gross, I know, but this is fairly central to our religion here so bear with me.

The show made the case that Christ's relatively rapid death - rapid for a man of his age and likely health - was consistent with a scriptural account of concurrent and preexisting psychological trauma due to pain and other stressors, which are thought to be the actually instrument of death. Usually one thinks of death being a result of an actual physical insult to the body that prevents the organism's continued existence, but it is likely that if Christ died as soon as it is reported in the scriptural account, his body simply shut down because the pain was so bad, and that is actually rare in terms of death.

This is also based on the scriptural account that he was speakind and lucid up until the end, which if he had died of hypobolemic shock or whatever other people have argued in the past, he would NOT have been able to "call out in a loud voice" and then give up the ghost. He would have checked out long before and lingered in a semi-vegetative state. Something catastrophic happened near the end, and physically it is not adequately explained.

And even if one assumes little validity in the account that his true pains were in the garden (which would support this position even more emphatically), the physical evidence aone sugggests that he did die of a combination of physical, mental, psychological, spiritual agony, and not just because he was a victim of an instrument of capital punishment. Quite consistent with the Christian's view of his uniquely distressing experience in his final hours, which has come under attack because of the fact that millions of other people have died in comparably painful ways.

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As a side note, the show argued that aggravating the situation was the fact he was close to exhaustion at the beginning of it due to not sleeping for 24 hours. But as a chronic insoniac who goes without sleep for this long at least once weekly, I am not thinking this is particularly unusual. Perhaps I am the unusual one, though.