…Sometimes in TL, the relationship to a particular day appears (when the elements are not connected by relationship to a single man, nor by a common subject) as the essential connective element of a relatively large chapter. Assuredly, there are few such chapters, but those few are among the most important. In particular must be mentioned the following: (1) Shabbat 1.4,5 = Shabbat T 1.16 ff. (111): The eighteen things they said in the upper room of Hananyah ben Hezkiyah ben Garon on the day when they were numbered and the House of Shammai outnumbered the House of Hillel. (2) Sotah 5.2-5: Three things expounded by R. Akiba and one expounded by R. Judah ben Hyrcanus (The parallel in Sotah T has already been discussed. It lacks the expression ‘In that same day.’) (3) Yadayim 4.1-4 = Yadayim T 16-18 (683): Things done ‘in that same day’ in which they installed R. Elazar ben Azaryah in the assembly. (These are again explicitly mentioned in Zebahim 1.3, and Bartinurah thinks that the matters mentioned in Sotah 5 were also expounded on that same day.) These passages suffice at least to show that it was customary to remember as a group the teachings learned from a given Rabbi on a given day. Evidently, this custom was shared by the sources of TL and the sources of the Gospels, for in both literatures are found collections, sometimes fairly large, of quite diverse elements associated chiefly by their relationship to a single day.
Morton Smith, Tannaitic Parallels to the Gospels, Journal of Biblical Literature Monograph Series, vol. VI (Philadelphia: Society for Biblical Literature, 1951), 130-131.