The idea that some people get “translated” in this manner is also a very early Christian idea. In the late first century, Papias of Hierapolis went around collecting oral traditions from those who had known Jesus and the apostles. Irenaeus quoted several passages from Papias, including when he was talking about “translation.” (No, AMGD, Mormons didn’t make up this definition of the word.) Click
here to read what Irenaeus said about it.
The early Jewish-Christian document, the
Clementine Recognitions had Peter saying this about translation.
“But the time was not yet that there should be a resurrection of the bodies that were dissolved; but this seemed rather to be their reward from God, that whoever should be found righteous, should remain longer in the body; or, at least, as is clearly related in the writings of the law concerning a certain righteous man, that God translated him. In like manner others were dealt with, who pleased His will, that, being translated to Paradise, they should be kept for the kingdom. But as to those who have not been able completely to fulfil the rule of righteousness, but have had some remnants of evil in their flesh, their bodies are indeed dissolved, but their souls are kept in good and blessed abodes, that at the resurrection of the dead, when they shall recover their own bodies, purified even by the dissolution, they may obtain an eternal inheritance in proportion to their good deeds.” (*Clementine Recognitions *1:52, in ANF 8:91.)