…the discursiveness of the Bavli and Pahlavi legal literature can be related to their respective pedagogic environments. As we saw in Šāyest nē šāyest 1.3, the scholastic environment of the Sasanian commentators was one in which later authorities transmitted the teachings of previous generations via an act of speech. That is, Zoroastrian sages “spoke” (guft) the teachings of their master. In rabbinic literature, the naming of previous authorities can be linked to the processes of oral transmission. This aspect of rabbinic culture is ubiquitous and constitutes one of its central foundational myths.
Shai Secunda, “The Sasanian ‘<i>Stam</i>’: Orality and the Composition of Babylonian Rabbinic and Zoroastrian Legal Literature” in <i>The Talmud in Its Iranian Context</i>, eds. Carol Bakhos and M. Rahim Shayegan (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010), 159.