This course introduces the student to a variety of fundamental principles and methods for reading, studying and understanding the Word of God. Special emphasis is given to those principles which, when applied, keep the student from improperly interpreting the Word of God. Topics covered include how to use one Scripture passage to decode and understand another, when to take Scripture as literal and when to take it as symbolic, a comparison of modern translations of the Bible, an analysis of how each translation came into existence and their relative merits and faults. Also covered are such principles as how to establish something as a doctrine, how to memorize and meditate on the Word of God, how to use all of the marginal notations found in most good study Bibles, the difference between sequential and topical Bible study, the use of Strong's Concordance and other supplemental Bible resources, learning how to go back to the original Greek, Aramaic and Hebrew in order to better understand a particular passage, learning to analyze Biblical lists in order to extract hidden facts, the use of maps and diagrams to aid in understanding the Scriptures and how the Bible interrelates together in the ultimate "Matrix".