No, the bible does not count, except to specific theists (Jews for the OT, xians for OT and NT) who presuppose that it is true. Even some xians don't accept it all as historical, some do.

The problem is, there is so much in there that is disproven by other written history, archeological evidence, modern cosmology & biology, etc. that even the non-miraculous parts are called into question.

No, that's definitely not a lame question. I do believe that there have been several posts written about this subject spread throughout certain discussions that have been going on recently, but that might take a while to go through all to find the info.

At face value i would agree that the books that have been slapped together by committees and together are called the Bible could be classified as a historical document, but only in the sense that were written in the past. Course, by that definition everything is a historical document and so the term starts to lose any coherency.

What your question goes to is the legitimacy of using "the Bible" as a valid historical source to support beliefs about history. On that point, the answer is an unequivocal NO as to its legitimacy as a historical document.

The reasons for this are, ironically, based on the study of history itself. When certain books were written, the culture of the time was not interested in history in the same way that it has come to mean academically. The point of the stories in the so-called Old Testament were for social/moral purposes, to teach a lesson and give context to a culture often finding itself on the verge of destruction. Historical continuity was felt by those in the mediterranean area to be a way to justify their superiority over other cultural groups in the region, hence stories were told to enhance/glorify/teach the jewish people so as to tell them where they had come from. However, accuracy was not important because that wasn't the point. There was simply no such thing as historiography or academic panels to keep people honest. For example, in numbers you have long strings of relations of "begats" showing a lineage. Even believing biblical scholars will point out that this should not be taken to mean a literal family tree, as names were recited orally and were remembered based on some grand achievement that the person had done; so if your great grandfather only lived and died, he wouldn't make the list but if your great great grandfather killed a mountain lion, he'd make the list and so a generation would be skipped when relating your great great grandfather begat your grandfather.

Historical accuracy here goes to the second problem and that being the type of people we're dealing with, who, as Sam Harris wittily points out, the wheel-barrow would have been a grand scientific achievement. These are people who had no concept of germs, genetics, phsyics, etc. and while this doesn't preclude them necessarily from being right at all, it should point out that when they begin discussing burning bushes and raining fire, scratching your head and muttering about primitives would be a good response.

Thirdly, and lastly, in the context of christian theology, there is simply no such thing as the bible. You have a conglomeration of separate books written hundreds and hundreds of years apart by separate people (often within the same book) slapped together by a committee largely for political purposes and that has no internal justification for just why the 66 books of your protestant bible are supposed to be there. And there is a point to saying "protestant" as opposed to catholic, since the two "bibles" are different and indeed, even different protestant versions differ between eachother. There is not a single verse that at all gives the rundown of just what texts are supposed to be there and the idea of "a bible" is one of the grandest historical misconceptions to give legitimacy to ideas that have no valid reason in and of themselves to be true.

The Bible can count as evidence that no matter how absurd something is, people can believe it. Can you imagine if Christianity hadn't existed before, and the Bible was written today - as is - how idiotic people would think it is? Only the sort of people who believe in things like the Heaven's Gate cult would fall for it. But since it's been around so long, and everyone in their family believed in it for generations, they still believe. And of course if they never actually read it that helps. Ministers usually don't mention the verses that us atheists are familiar with - the horrific and ridiculous things.