What Does “Tradition” Mean in the Bible?
The Word of God that the Church received from the apostles and hands on as something alive, with the help of the Holy Spirit. It is always united with the Bible: both come from the same source.
It can mean
- How it is handed on: through the teaching, the life, and the prayer of the Church, from one generation to the next.
- Careful: it is not the same as the traditions of each place, which grew up over time: customs in the liturgy or in devotion. Those can change.
- In the Bible: the first Christians did not yet have the New Testament in writing. They received from the apostles what Jesus taught.
Where it appears in the Bible
1 Corinthians 11:23; Luke 1:2
What the Bible says
1 Corinthians 11:23
For I have received of the Lord that which also I delivered unto you, that the Lord Jesus, the same night in which he was betrayed, took bread.
Luke 1:2
According as they have delivered them unto us, who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word:
Douay-Rheims Bible (Challoner revision), public domain.
Source: Catechism 78, 80-82 and 83