Lonely item error in bibliography .bbl file

Question

I want to create a .bbl file with bibitems to be able to use it with bibentry package. Below is a single example how I'm doing this:

\begin{thebibliography}{1}

\bibitem{ABC} Author Name {\em Title} 2016.

\end{the bibliography}

In my testFile.tex file I attached the testFile.bbl file as follows:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{bibentry}

\begin{document}
 \input{testFile.bbl}
 \bibliographystyle{alpha}
 \nobibliography{testFile}

 My citation: \cite{ABC}
\end{document}

However, when I run my .tex file I obtain the following error:

Lonely \item--perhaps a missing list environment. 

I checked that solution latex error lonely item--perhaps a missing list environment in the bibliography , but it is not working unfortunately. I'm using TexShop for Mac's, however I tried also to compile via terminal and the error was the same. Can anyone suggest what I might be doing wrong?