"The fact is that much misunderstanding is often caused by our modern attempts to limit too strictly the meaning of a Greek word"
About this Quote
The line hinges on "limit too strictly". Murray isn't arguing for vagueness; he's arguing against a certain kind of false exactness, the urge to force a living, many-shaded term into a single, tidy English equivalent. Greek words often operate like clusters: they carry ethical, civic, emotional, and metaphysical meanings at once, and their power comes from that overlap. Strip that range away and you don't just mistranslate; you misunderstand the culture that produced the text, importing modern categories (psychological, legalistic, individualistic) into a world that organized experience differently.
Context matters here. Murray wrote in an era when classical Greece was routinely recruited to justify modern projects - liberal education, imperial self-congratulation, even national character. His caution reads as a check on that habit: if you nail down a Greek word too hard, you can smuggle in whatever "modern" agenda you want and call it faithful reading. The subtext is both scholarly and civic: linguistic humility isn't pedantry; it's a guardrail against confident, anachronistic certainty.
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Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Murray, Gilbert. (2026, January 15). The fact is that much misunderstanding is often caused by our modern attempts to limit too strictly the meaning of a Greek word. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-fact-is-that-much-misunderstanding-is-often-158336/
Chicago Style
Murray, Gilbert. "The fact is that much misunderstanding is often caused by our modern attempts to limit too strictly the meaning of a Greek word." FixQuotes. January 15, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-fact-is-that-much-misunderstanding-is-often-158336/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"The fact is that much misunderstanding is often caused by our modern attempts to limit too strictly the meaning of a Greek word." FixQuotes, 15 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-fact-is-that-much-misunderstanding-is-often-158336/. Accessed 12 Feb. 2026.
