Mar 8:17 Why do you reason that it is because you have no bread?
Mar 8:17 Why do you reason that it is because you have no bread? perceive you not yet, neither understand? have you your heart yet hardened?
Alternative (translating the symbols and the Greek): Why do reason that you have no reason? Do you not see what is real and put it all together? Have your ability to connect emotionally turned to stone?
This verse connects some of Christ's most commonly used symbols. It refers to the previous verses mention of "leaven," a symbol for the hidden spirit or life within things. Leaven is connected to bread, Christ's symbol for the beneficial products of the mind (reason) that support physical life. The heart is Christ's symbol for relationships, the emotional realm of the connections between people as feelings, "ideas" that cannot be put into words.
Christ often talks about transformation, how things are changed from one thing to another (discussed here more extensively). Here, the transformation discussed is a negative, hearts becoming stones. The stone is one of Christ's first symbols of the purely physical, hearts turned into stone, the emotional becoming purely physical, with no connection to life.
Christ see human understanding as the ability to see the connection between things as they are transformed, that is, to recognize all life, including communication as an on-going process. Ideas musts be understood in their larger context, not in a limited way. While the apostle's can only connect Christ's mention of the leaven in the previous verse to bread, he wants them to see its connection to the inner spirit of things. To understand, we must see more than the surface, the immediate, but what is inside, what is deep, the cause creating what we see.
In this case, the spirit, the leaven, is the cause of the bread, the product of the mind, just like relationships, the emotional connections between people, are the cause of their ways of seeing the world.
"Reason" is from dialogizomai (dialogizomai), which means "to calculate exactly," "to add up account," "to debate," and "to argue."
"Loaves" is from artos (artos), which means specifically a "cake of whole wheat bread," and generally "loaf," and "bread."
"Perceive" is from noeô (noeo), means specifically "to perceive with the eyes."
"Understand" is from suniêmi (syniemi) which means "to bring together" or "to set together." It is also a metaphor for "perceive," "hear," and "understand" as we would say that we "put it all together" when figuring something out.
"Heart" is from kardia (kardia), which means "heart" and which we discuss in a larger Greek context here. It is a metaphor for "deep."
"Harden" is from pôroô (poroo), which means "to petrify," "to turn into stone," and "to harden."
