Yes. Your individual faith decides what is "Bible." The Bible, in and of itself, is "valid" (true) to you only as long as it reflects your pre-existing faith. It's classic solipsism.
That couldn't have been true for me, and I suspect virtually all other Bible-believing Protestants. I learned what my faith WAS by reading the Bible and adopting whatever its teachings turned out to be. I didn't have any church background when I started to really believe. So, there was nothing to mold the Bible TO. What I believe was molded by what the Bible says. That's what led me later to a Bible-believing church.
FK: That couldn't have been true for me, and I suspect virtually all other Bible-believing Protestants. I learned what my faith WAS by reading the Bible and adopting whatever its teachings turned out to be
In other words, you had faith but didn't know what you believed in until you opened the Bible? How can you call that faith?
The way you describe this, the Bible gave you faith! If that's so, then things must have reversed sometime between Abraham and the present!
So, there was nothing to mold the Bible TO. What I believe was molded by what the Bible says. That's what led me later to a Bible-believing church.
Let me get this straight: what exactly did you believe when you started reading the Bible?
What if you started reading the Book of Mormon instead of the Bible? Would you have ended up joining a Mormon assembly? If not, why not?
The only way you could tell if something was genuine or not is for you to know what is scripture and what is not. Where would that knowledge come from, and how did reading the Bible add to such a powerful knowledge?