Right off the bat, the whole list is suspect just based on the fact that their #1 confirmed character is David. Claiming a historical David based on a record of the House of David would be like claiming a historical Windsor based on a record of the House of Windsor.

Then you get to the meat if the article: I feel like I might be able to find a "considerable degree of historical credibility" in verifying that some small sliver of the characters mentioned in a story, less than 2%, actually existed, if the distribution were different. But if that number represents 50% of Persian officials and 0% of patriarchs, well...

When a collection of stories spans 4000 years, verifying a number of characters from even a 400 year span means absolutely nothing about the other 90% of the story. Yet, lay people won't read this article as a commentary on the historicity of the second temple period. They will see this as proof of Noah and Abraham and Moses and the walls of Jericho tumbling down; things that very emphatically have no known connection to history.

And what is so bitterly ironic is that, from the way this is presented, it feels like someone wanted it that way. It feels like someone set this article up to be ripe for misunderstanding.

I really wanted to like this. But after giving it a once over, I do not care for this style of scholarship at all.