The question is much more complex than it first appears – it’s not yes/no.

Firstly, the nature of what the Bible is. The Bible is a collection of books, not a single book. 66 in Protestant versions, 73 for Roman Catholics, 78 for Eastern Orthodox, and varied among other groups. So the question about “historical” must be answered across those books, not for the collection as a whole.

Secondly, what does “historical” mean in this context? I suspect (and I don’t mean to necessarily project my answer on to you, OP), that a lot of people who ask this question work with an assumption that “a book is historical if it tells you an accurate story of events as they really happened”; and that if a book isn’t historical, you can disregard it for the purposes of history.

No historian works like that. In one sense, every book is historical. Apuleius’ The Golden Ass is a wonderful ancient novel that tells the fanciful tall of Lucius who goes through several transformations. It’s a work of ancient fiction. But it’s still historical in the sense that it tells us a great deal about the ancient world in the 2nd century AD.

Back to the Bible, then. Even if you think, say, that the gospel narrative are fiction they still tell you a great deal about what the authors believed, about their historical and cultural setting, about the beliefs of early Christians, and so on. The Bible is a collection of historical documents open to historical inquiry.

Moreover, those 66/73/78 books are not all of a piece. They include texts that provide narrative history, though of a particular kind; poetry; letters; proverbs; etc.. What does it mean for poetry to be “historical”?

So, let’s turn to the question of Jesus and historical evidence. I have a long post in the faq about the historical evidence for Jesus – in short the bible “counts” as historical evidence. But here I just want to talk about the Gospels. The (canonical) gospels are four texts written in the mid to late 1st century in the context of communities of early Christians. They all attest to the existence of those communities indirectly, and give us evidence about what those people thought, believed, and told each other about the life, death (and resurrection, as they believed it), of a figure called Jesus of Nazareth. That’s evidence towards the existence of Jesus.

(side note. When I write ‘evidence’ here, I mean “a piece of data that contributes towards a case for”; I don’t mean “decisive proof that something is true”.)

The questions of how accurate, reliable, etc., the gospel narratives are – these are a whole set of questions that is a field of study in itself. Reponses range from the super-conservative (i.e., that they are entirely accurate and reliable), through to the super-sceptical (that they contain nothing of authentic value about a historical Jesus). The one thing, I would stress, that must be true is that they are studied historically - i.e. by the methods of history. It doesn’t help to bring a presupposition such as biblical inerrancy (that the biblical texts contain no errors – this is a theological position, not a historical one) to the process of historical inquiry. This is true even for historians who happen to be Christian believers.

In short – yes, the biblical texts are ‘historical’, because they provide information about the past. They also provide evidence for the existence of a historical Jesus. But evidence is not the same as proof. Lastly, evidence must be weighed and studied. That’s what historical research is about.

I cannot speak to the entirety of the Bible, but certain books are certainly historical, and worth reading for their historical context. The best example is the Book of Acts, which is an excellent read to discover elements of Judean and Roman society in the first century A.D.

Consider the story of Paul's arrest, Acts 21-22. Paul is seized by a mob who beat and attempt to have him killed - the Roman commander stops the mob. When Paul reveals that he is a Roman Citizen, the Roman commander stops and has to consult his commander (22:25-27). Clearly in Judea, we see that the Jewish population is used to self disciplining their own subjects, and Paul is creating a stir in the city. The disruption was large enough that it resembled a riot, which had to be stopped by Roman armed force. Paul is then taken to be beaten without trial, which is stopped because Paul claims to be a Roman Citizen. The story continues on, where Paul has to be transferred to Rome to receive trial. The whole story of Acts has literary elements and tropes that have to be taken into account, but hidden among the story elements, there are real discussions about who has authority in Judea, what rights a Roman Citizen has (and they even mention the distinction between being born a Citizen versus purchasing Citizenship).

The books of the Bible were written in specific historical circumstances, and they are worth reading in light of this. Historians working on Ancient history do cite the bible for various events, such as the Census - though they debate the actual extent as a "census of the whole world" is absurd. There is certainly historical evidence for Jesus in the Bible, especially among the archaeological finds of early versions of various gospels and epistles. But the more important element is to look for what is incidental or unintentional in the text, because that is where you are more likely to find the interesting historical facts.

The Bible is not a historical book, but it contains historical books. The current academic consensus is that Jesus was a real person who can be historically verified to exist.

You have to keep in mind that the Bible is 66 books, not just one. In the New Testament, you have the Gospels, Acts of the Apostles, the Epistles, and the Revelation of John of Patmos. Revelation is an apocalyptic prophecy (i.e. not history, but could very well be an allegory for Roman politics), the Epistles are letters, primarily from Paul to churches in various cities (for example, Romans is to the Galatians in Galatians). The Gospels and Acts fit the definition of history because they describe past events that the authors considered to be factual (non-canonical gospels are not necessarily works of history, for example, the Gospel of Thomas is a collection of sayings). Acts of the Apostles is a continuation of the Gospel of Luke by the same author describing how Jesus's initial followers spread his teachings.

Like all primary source works of history, they can be examined for their historical validity in comparison with other sources.

Two of the most important independent sources are Tacitus's Annals and Josephus's Antiquities. Both of these were written shortly after the Gospels

Since the New Testament was not compiled as a single collection for centuries later and there are extant partial manuscripts of the Epistles and Gospels, which previously existed as independent documents, I would argue that the information in the earlier Epistles, which were written roughly contemporaneous with the events describe in Acts, are decent sources to corroborate the Gospels and Acts. This is not necessarily to say that the events described within are true from a religious standpoint, but that in the broader scheme of things (there was a guy name Jesus who taught a new religion and got crucified, his followers spread the religion over a wide area), the historical information is accurate.

There has been much more in-depth scholarship than what I could put here. Bart Ehrman is an example of one of the foremost scholars on early Christianity. I suggest reading his books such as How Jesus Became God

Hello. There is always more room for discussion on this topic, but you might find the answer you're looking for in the relevant FAQ section for this subreddit.