who was the first to use that word? Not the mormons because in dates back to the 1770s according to NGRAM viewer.

https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=telestial&year_start=1700&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Ctelestial%3B%2Cc0

Is it a cross between terrestrial and celestial? Was there some other cult from which mormonism borrowed the idea?

I think that Eamanuel Swedenburg used it in his writings in the 1700s

Ok, so I teach this high school comparative religions class. Having kids do a presentation on a religious figure. Choose anything you want. Class has Mormons in it even though not in the Morridor.

So this little girl comes to me and says "I want to do Emanuel Swedenborg. Is that ok?"

I'm like "Ohhhh he is sooooo interesting. Had lots of influence on American sects. Please do!"

She comes back 2 days later, "I changed my mind. I want to do John Smyth (founder of Baptist religion) instead.

I respond "ok." Thinking, COME ON! Don't do this to me!

I don't know for certain, but whereas "celestial" comes from the Latin "caelum" meaning the sky or heaven, and "terrestrial" comes from the Latin "terra" meaning the earth, "telestial" seems to come from the Greek "tele" meaning far away. Another word with this root is "telescope." So:

Celestial = heavenly
Terrestrial = earthly
Telestial = distant...ly



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/14/2014 03:50PM by kimball.

I'll be darned. Always thought Joe Smith made that word up. Well, that makes him even less original than I've always thought.

Doesn't make sence. He can't be the Extra-Terrestrial because he isn't from Earth. So E.T. The Extra-Telestial.

"Extra" in this case means "most extreme" or "outside", so it means "from outside Earth". Similarly, "extraordinary" means "outside the ordinary".

Same here- I always thought JS took 'celestial' and 'terrestrial' out of 1 Corinthians 15:40-42 and combined them to make up his own word.

Found a thread on this subject:

http://exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,177611,177667

E-telestial is best. I just love those UFOs.

Ooops, I thought you said "testicle"....my bad....

I went to look at some of the actual scans of the books that the Ngram viewer graphs (linked at bottom of Ngram page). I looked at a few dozen examples and NONE of the books, before the beginning of the Mormon era (1830s), actually use the word "telestial." Instead, it looks like the Google digitizing software has misread the word "celestial" as "telestial."

Oh well.