Don't throw away your New Testament just yet.

Last night's Discovery Channel documentary "The Lost Tomb of Jesus," alleging that Jesus may have been married to Mary Magdalene and that they may have had a son named Judah, raised some intriguing questions but fell a long way short of providing definitive answers.

The program, produced by James Cameron of "Titanic" fame, was based on the discovery 27 years ago of several burial boxes, or ossuaries, under what is now an apartment complex in Jerusalem.

Three of the boxes had inscriptions on them with the names of "Jesus, son of Joseph," a woman who may have been Mary Magdalene and "Judah, son of Jesus." The other inscribed boxes contained the names of Mary, Matthew, Jose and James.

The program speculated they were Jesus' mother; his brother Joseph, nicknamed Jose; his brother James; and a relative of Mary's named Matthew. Most of the inscriptions were in Aramaic, while the one purported to be Mary Magdalene was in Greek.

Israeli archaeologists said at the time of the boxes' discovery in 1980 that the names were so common in first-century Palestine that it was impossible to know if they referred to the family of Jesus of Nazareth.

But when the documentary makers submitted the names to a University of Toronto statistician, he calculated that the chances ranged from 1 in 600 to 1 in 30,000 that all of those names from Scripture would be found together in one family burial plot.

The filmmakers, led by Israeli-born Canadian Simcha Jacobovici, also conducted a form of genetic testing on residues from the boxes, which allegedly contained the remains of Jesus and Mary Magdalene, and determined they were not related on their mother's side, which they suggested meant they were married.

In keeping with Israeli custom, the bones themselves had been reburied in a cemetery after the boxes were unearthed.

In a key omission noted by the documentary's critics, no DNA testing was done on the box that allegedly contained their son's remains or the one that allegedly contained the bones of Mary, Jesus' mother, to see if DNA residues in them matched those in the Jesus box.

Traditional Christians believe Jesus was bodily resurrected after his death, and several stories in the New Testament describe Jesus appearing in physical form to his disciples after his crucifixion.

Many Christians also believe that Jesus was not married, although the Scriptures do not rule that out.

Discovery Channel officials said on their Web site that some Christians believe Jesus' resurrection was a spiritual one, not a bodily one, so that the documentary does not overturn a fundamental tenet of Christian faith.