ChristsWords.com -- The original Greek and its symbolic meaning

Mar 12:34 You are not far from the kingdom of God.

Alternative: You are not far from the divine rule.

Hidden meaning: If we take this statement as a message from Christ to us today, it have a very different meaning than praise for a specific person in history, Christ consistently describes the divine kingdom or divine rule as an on-going process.  What Christ says here is that we are all close to it, a part of it, even if we don

Mar 12:31 And the second [is] like, [namely] this, You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

Mar 12:30 And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength: this [is] the first commandment.

Alternative: And you will care about the powerful, your God, out of the entirety of your whole heart, and out of the wholeness of your spirit, and out of the wholeness of your intelligence, and out of the wholeness of your strength of body, this [is] the prime directive.

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Mar 12:29 The first of all the commandments [is], Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God is one Lord:

Alternative: The foremost of every command?  Hear and understand, Israel; that the Master, our God, is the one who has power:

Mar 12:27 He is not the God of the dead, but the God of the living: you therefore do greatly err.

Alternative: He is not the God of the dead, but the God of the living: you really stray a great distance.

Wordplay: The joke here is about wandering a great distance, specifically the distances between life and death, but it is lost in the standard English translation.  Christ even gets in a little alliteration to make his point even

Mar 12:26 And as touching the dead, that they rise: have you not read in the book of Moses, how in the bush God spake unto him, saying, I [am] the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob?

Alternative: But concerning the the dead and that they are awakened: have you not studied in the book of Moses, about how God proclaimed to him from the bramble teaching, I, the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob?

Mar 12:25 For when they shall rise from the dead, they neither marry, nor are given in marriage; but are as the angels which are in heaven.

Alternative: Since whenever they might be awaken from the dead, they neither marry nor a given in marriage but they exist just as envoys in the universe.

Hidden meaning:The verb "rise up" is in the subjective mood.

Mar 12:24 Do you not therefore err, because you know not the scriptures, neither the power of God?

Alternative: Through this you go astray seeing neither the design nor the capacity of God.

Wordplay: The wordplay here juxtaposes going astray with not seeing.

Mar 12:17 Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's.

Alternative: Give back to Caesar Caesar's and to God God's.

Mar 12:16 Whose [is] this image and superscription?

Alternative: What's this likeness and the writing on it.

Hidden meaning: This sentence is much more casual in the Greek. Christ asks this question in the most off-hand way possible. The sentence doesn't even have a verb. I tried to capture this feeling with the contraction.