teaching, custom, or practice handed down from authoritative teachers and received by the next generation to keep
This word simply means something handed down. It is built from the everyday verb for handing an object over, and in ordinary Greek it covered concrete transfers like passing on property, money, or an office. By the New Testament period, Greek-speaking Jews had given it a special use: the body of custom and teaching received from earlier generations and passed on as authoritative. It is close to the plainer words for teaching (διδαχή), but it adds one thing they lack: the insistence that what is taught was itself received from someone earlier and is being handed on intact.
What makes the word tricky is that it is completely neutral in itself. The same word describes teaching that leads people away from God and teaching that must be held onto for dear life. Everything depends on the source, so the writers keep asking one question about any tradition: who handed it down?
That question splits the word's uses into two:
- On one side stands human tradition: the rulings and customs that people build up, such as the "tradition of the elders" the Pharisees taught and the persuasive philosophy warned against in Colossians. Jesus weighs this kind against God's own commandment (ἐντολή) and, where it competes with the command, calls it merely the tradition of men.
- On the other side stands apostolic tradition: the core Christian message the apostles received from the Lord and handed on to the churches, including the gospel, the Lord's Supper, and rules for Christian conduct. This kind is to be gripped tightly.