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Although the work is not gnostic in a theological sense, the author, who considers himself to be a teacher to the unidentified audience to which he writes (see e.g. 9.9), intends to impart to his readers the perfect gnosis (knowledge), that they may perceive that the Christians are the only true covenant people, and that the Jewish people are no longer in a covenant with God. His polemics are, above all, directed against Judaizing Christians (see Ebionites, Nazarenes, Judaizing teachers).

In no other writing of that early time is the separation of the Gentile Christians from observant Jews so clearly insisted upon. The covenant promises, he maintains, belong only to the Christians (e.g. 4.6–8), and circumcision, and the entire Jewish sacrificial and ceremonial system are, according to him, due to misunderstanding. According to the author's conception, Jewish scriptures, rightly understood, contain no such injunctions (chapters 9–10). He is a thorough opponent to Jewish legalism, but by no means an antinomist. At some points the Epistle seems quite Pauline, as with its concept of atonement.

The Epistle reinterprets many of the laws of the Torah. For example, the prohibition on eating pork is intended to forbid the people to live like swine, who supposedly grunt when hungry but are silent when full: likewise, the people are not to pray to God when they are in need but ignore him when they are satisfied. Similarly, the prohibition on eating rabbit means that the people are not to behave in a promiscuous manner, and the prohibition on eating weasel is also to be interpreted as a prohibition of oral sex, based on the mistaken belief that weasels copulate via the mouth.