I think it doesn't matter what you call it as long as people are made aware of scholar's assumptions. I don't know much about archaeology but I do know that modern bible scholars tend to come at things with certain assumptions (from a modern bible scholar himself) lecture "Reading the Bible" he starts talking about it at 11:10
The Hebrew Bible In his notes he says: "Modern Bible scholarship/scholars (MBS) assumes that: . . . Ancient Jewish and Christian interpreters, and their medieval and modern continuators, have an opposite set of assumptions according to which the Bible is . . . "
Modern Bible scholarship/scholars (MBS) assumes that:
• The Bible is a collection of books like any others: created and put together by normal (i.e. fallible) human beings;
• The Bible is often inconsistent because it derives from sources (written and oral) that do not always agree; individual biblical books grow over time, are multilayered;
• The Bible is to be interpreted in its context:
✦ Individual biblical books take shape in historical contexts; the Bible is a document of its time;
✦ Biblical verses are to be interpreted in context;
✦ The “original” or contextual meaning is to be prized above all others;
• The Bible is an ideologically-driven text (collection of texts). It is not “objective” or neutral about any of the topics that it treats. Its historical books are not “historical” in our sense.
✦ “hermeneutics of suspicion”;
✦ Consequently MBS often reject the alleged “facts” of the Bible (e.g. was Abraham a real person? Did the Israelites leave Egypt in a mighty Exodus? Was Solomon the king of a mighty empire?);
✦ MBS do not assess its moral or theological truth claims, and if they do, they do so from a humanist perspective;
★ The Bible contains many ideas/laws that we moderns find offensive;
• The authority of the Bible is for MBS a historical artifact; it does derive from any ontological status as the revealed word of God;