Multiple accounts of the First Vision

Criticism

Joseph Smith gave several accounts of the First Vision. Critics charge that differences in the accounts show that he changed and embellished his story over time, and that he therefore didn't have any such vision.

Source(s) of the Criticism

• Tanners
• Grant Palmer

Response

Responses include:

• Different details given to different audiences
• Just because he said he saw "the Lord" in the 1832 account doesn't mean he didn't also see another personage.

Comparison to Paul's vision

Paul the apostle gave several accounts of his vision of the resurrected Lord while on the road to Damascus. Like Joseph Smith's account of the First Vision, Paul's accounts differ in some details but agree in the overall message. Richard Lloyd Anderson made the following comparisons.

Many Christians who comfortably accept Paul’s vision reject Joseph Smith’s. However, they aren’t consistent in their criticisms, for most arguments against Joseph Smith’s first vision would detract from Paul’s Damascus experience with equal force.

For instance, Joseph Smith’s credibility is attacked because the earliest known description of his vision wasn’t given until a dozen years after it happened. But Paul’s earliest known description of the Damascus appearance, found in 1 Corinthians 9:1, was recorded about two dozen years after his experience.

Critics love to dwell on supposed inconsistencies in Joseph Smith’s spontaneous accounts of his first vision. But people normally give shorter and longer accounts of their own vivid experiences when retelling them more than once. Joseph Smith was cautious about public explanations of his sacred experiences until the Church grew strong and could properly publicize what God had given him. Thus, his most detailed first vision account came after several others—when he began his formal history.

This, too, parallels Paul’s experience. His most detailed account of the vision on the road to Damascus is the last of several recorded. (See Acts 26:9–20.) And this is the only known instance in which he related the detail about the glorified Savior prophesying Paul’s work among the Gentiles. (See Acts 26:16–18.) Why would Paul include this previously unmentioned detail only on that occasion? Probably because he was speaking to a Gentile audience, rather than to a group of Jewish Christians. Both Paul and Joseph Smith had reasons for delaying full details of their visions until the proper time and place.^[1]

Endnotes

[note]  Richard L. Anderson, "[Parallel Prophets: Paul and Joseph Smith]," Ensign, Apr. 1985, 12.

Further reading

FAIR web site

• FAIR Topical Guide: The First Vision

External links

• Elden Watson, Joseph Smith's First Vision—A Harmony