Yes.

The fact that later tradents decided to adopt various textual traditions and afford to them the status of "scripture" has no bearing on their use a primary source documents. They hail from a sometimes vague historical context--but they are ancient and reflective of their historical context.

EDIT: Of course, we have to to a lot of work to reconstruct a context for many texts. Some texts are easier to reconstruct than others. Regardless--for the Hebrew Bible, texts were composed during the late 11th-2nd c. BCE. The New Testament was composed during the 1st-2nd c. CE (some texts in the NT may have been composed later).

I reiterate what the other poster said. Even from a secular standpoint, Scripture does in fact give us insight into the ancient world. They were real authors living in the ancient world, influenced by the local culture and politics of the time, addressing any concerns and desires they had. You can read Scripture to gain insight into what was going on at the time of the books writing. All the supernatural subjects can be perceived as a personal desire for outcome and/or interpretation of a real-life event. For example, Israel being split in half under the rule of Solomon. The author states that this is due to God punishing them because Solomon accepted paganism, but a scholarly insight might suggest that Solomon aggravated a lot of people for bringing in pagan culture, thus causing a schism. The author may have assumed it was Gods punishment, though, and added that insight into the book.