the bibles stories were written over a period of hundreds of years by different people but who decided to collate them into the bible today?

The redactoring (the official term for determining the text of a sacred book) of the Old and New Testaments were done separately as they were done several hundred years apart.

The Old Testament (or Torah) was compiled by a scribe named Ezra around 500 BC following the return of the Jewish to Jerusalem after the Babylonian Exile. The 39 texts used by the Jews and the Protestant churches were settle at that time and remained consistent since, then.

In the 200s BC the Torah was translated from Hebrew into Greek by a group of 70 scholars. It is called the Septuagint translation after the Latin word for "70". None other texts (some of which are additions to existing texts) which already existed in Greek were included in some copies of the Septuagint All of these were authored after the time of Ezra. This was the "Old Testament" that Jesus and the apostles would have used. Though they never quoted from or referred to the nine additional texts.

The New Testament books were all authored between 40 AD and 95 AD. The earliest "list" of what where considered to be accepted texts appeared around 110 AD, and included no texts which are not in the current New Testament. It did lack a handful of the shorter texts from our NT.

The oldest known collection of the NT texts into a single volume appeared around 250 AD. Shortly after the invention of the "book". Before that all texts were on scrolls which did not allow something to length of the NT to fit on a single scroll and still be practical to use. While the volume does not survive, we are told what it contained. It had all the texts we know today except 2 and 3 John. It also included the first letter written by Clements of Rome (who was a disciple of the apostle John). But this was also a church that Clement had founded and lead for many years when he was alive.

The first mass produced Bibles did not appear until around 350 AD. With the Edit or Tolerance issued by Constantine which allowed Christians (and others) to practice their faiths openly, the church authorize the production of 50 Bibles. The elected to used the Septuagint text of the Old Testament, as will as the 27 books we known as the New Testament, There was some debate about including 2 and 3 John. If you read these two letters 0 each half a page in length - they are personal letters written to friends to tank them for their support of John's ministry. As such, they contain little doctrinal matter and so were considered to be some not be important enough to include. They also debated the including of a text called the Apocalypse of Peter - a Revelation like imagery of the future and the end times. But the book was rejected because no proof could be found that it had existed before the late 2nd century, so its authorship was in question.

The Bible has remained pretty much unchanged in its canon since then. Protestant church tend to use the shorter canon of 39 books for their Old Testament, while the Catholic and Orthodox churches included the nine additional texts of the Septuagint. The canon of the New Testament is the same for all Christian churches.

The Jewish scribes in Babylon when they were slaves, wrote down the stories from the different tribes that had been told over campfires for 1000 years. Most of those were the stories from the Sumerian Tablets since that is the pre-cursor language to Hebrew. From there everyone read the works and then just added something new. Brain dead fundies think it was some sort of miracle that all of the stories fit together, but then thinking is not their strong suit.

It wasn't a particular person, or a discrete event such as the First Council of Nicaea as is often said. It was more of a gradulal process over time. There's a Wikipedia article discussing the process if you're really interested in it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Development_of_the_C...

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The Roman empire held a council to decide which Christian Dogma's would remain and which would be scrapped. This was to unite the Empire and strengthen it's moral ensuring a longer survival.

72 scholars of Greek and Hebrew worked on this.

Carefully, minutely examined. Lots of copies of many books circulated: ppl spent their lives preserving it.

The apocryphal books were deemed...redundant, and off topic at times.

This attitude is maintained today.

Much study was done.

Ultimately God led in this.

Different people at different times. Here is a summary of the history (as far as the Western Bible is concerned):

http://www.bible-reviews.com/charts_timeline_wbc.h...

The Old Testament was put together by the Jewish prophets of Old. The New Testament was put together by the early church at Rome.

That's a bit over-simplified, but yes.

Nobody did. They were compiled over time, "inspired" one might say.

The Catholic church.