“Both to Greeks and non-Greeks”
I am obligated both to Greeks and non-Greeks, both to the wise and the foolish. (Romans 1:14 BSB)
What it sounds like today
'Non-Greeks' sounds like a flat, neutral label, all the edge drained out.
The cultural key
BSB renders the Greek word barbaros here as the tame 'non-Greeks,' smoothing away its bite. Barbaros is onomatopoeia: to Greek ears, foreign languages sounded like 'bar-bar-bar,' so a 'barbarian' was simply someone who did not speak Greek. Greek versus barbarian was the ancient world's great divide, civilization against everyone else, exactly as Jew versus Gentile split it from the other side. Paul, a Jew writing in Greek to Rome, stands athwart both binaries and declares himself in debt to every quadrant.
Recovered meaning
'I am obligated to both halves of every division the world draws': the gospel as a debt owed equally across the civilized/uncivilized line. Romans then spends eleven chapters dismantling the other binary, Jew and Gentile.