The text of the Mek. RsShBY is best understood as a written embodiment and representation of the broad and diverse pedagogical and transmissional culture from which it stemmed, and within which it functioned. The diversity of the parallel interpolations of mishnaic and toseftan traditions in Mek. RsShBY Pis?a is an overt manifestation, in written form, of the different methods of rabbinic transmission of tradition.