Many people assume the term rapture is straight from the Bible, but it isn’t. Let me walk you through it clearly:

In the Bible

• The concept comes from 1 Thessalonians 4:17, where Paul says believers will be “caught up” (Greek: harpazō, Latin: rapiemur) to meet the Lord in the air.
• •The Latin Vulgate translation by Jerome (around AD 405) uses rapiemur (“we shall be snatched/caught up”), from which the English word rapture is eventually derived.
• But the actual word “rapture” is not used in Scripture itself. In Literature & Theology
• The English noun “rapture” (meaning “a state of being carried away” or “ecstatic joy”) appears in Middle English around the 17th century, coming from the Latin root raptura (“seizure, carrying off”).
• The first theological use of “rapture” to describe the catching away of the saints seems to show up in English-language Christian writings in the 17th century as Protestant writers began drawing from the Latin term.
• By the 18th–19th centuries, especially with John Nelson Darby (1800–1882) and early dispensationalists, “rapture” became widely used as a technical theological term for the end-times event.

So, the earliest “mention” is in the Latin Vulgate (rapiemur, c. 405 AD), but the first appearance of the English word “rapture” in Christian eschatology shows up in 17th-century theological writings, then became popularized in the 19th century.