I've heard it over and over again from Catholics, that the Church compiled the Bible that all other Christian Bibles are based on. The vague story I've heard is that there was some sort of Vatican Council or something that got together and chose which books to put in to create the Bible that Catholics are to follow, pre-reformation. I guess a spin-off question is why exactly the Church decided to make an actual 'selective' Bible.
I know that Luther removed books during the reformation and I've no doubt that other denominations have maybe altered it too, but is the Catholic Bible the real 'original' Bible (ignoring the Old Testament taken from the Jews, because that was obviously borrowed)? Did the Church really compile the Bible and pick which books belong in it? I've tried looking it up but I either get a big bowl of word salad or some weird hard to understand historical rants.
Bonus points if you have reasoning as to why they chose certain books!! Thank you so much.
There was no council that established the canon in the same way that say the council of Nicaea established the basic creed for Christians and laid out how churches were to be organized. What you do see is that by the 6th century bishops are passing list and commissioning codices that have similar or the exact same books. So it stands to reason that either by tradition or a specific decision we don't have a record of a canon of sorts was established.
Second part of the question- was it done by Catholics? Depends on how you define Catholics. Prior to 1054 there was one church and the offices, churches, and officials that modern Catholics and Eastern Orthodox descend from were the ones who put the Bible together. If you agree that the early church fathers are Catholics then yes, Catholics put the bible together. If you believe, like a good deal of protestants do, that there was a period between the early church and the reformation where the true Christian church was corrupted then they weren't Catholics.
How they landed on the particular books is complicated and each book has its place for a reason. For example the gospel of John has many direct refutations of Gnosticism. The Gospel of Luke and the Book of Acts both reach out to gentile audiences who would be unfamiliar with Jewish traditions and in the case of acts describe one of the initial disagreements in the early church, did one have to be Jewish before he could be Christian?