The question is whether the faith-based hypothesis adds anything to knowledge of the Bible and of history. Is the hypothesis needed? You can say religion or faith has a social function in bringing communities together, or a psychological function in fortifying people during hard times. But that doesn't mean Christian faith counts as propositional knowledge or that it competes successfully with science or with a secular worldview. We can understand how the Bible was written without assuming the process was supernatural and miraculous.

On the contrary, we're much more faithful to the details and to the facts of the actual process when we don't make such anachronistic presumptions. Those Christian presumptions distort our thinking and lead us into self-reinforcing delusions and half-baked, specious reasoning. For example, Christians end up worshiping the Bible as inerrant, so they have to tie themselves into knots to "explain" how there are no errors, absurdities, moral atrocities, or failed prophecies in the Bible.

I amuse myself sometimes watching debates on YouTube between actual scholars and Christian fanatics who defend the Bible's stance on slavery. That's the kind of losing battle you end up fighting when you lack secular understanding of what the Bible is.