The Hortatory Address to the Greeks is an appeal to them to give up the worship of their gods, and to devote themselves to the worship of the one living and true God.
Moreover they are not doctrinal, but hortatory, and purely figurative.
Hence we may conclude that the original book consisted of a central mass of religious, civil and social laws, preceded by a hortatory introduction and followed by an effective peroration.
Thus both are hortatory writings, the one argumentative in form, the other prophetic, after the manner of later Old Testament prophets whose messages came in visions and similitudes.
Special occasion for such a hortatory letter may be discerned in its polemic against intimate relations between ascetics of opposite sex, implied to exist among its readers, in contrast to usage in the writer's own locality.