1820–2020

The First Vision

Four accounts in Joseph Smith's own voice, and they do not match

Joseph Smith left at least four accounts of the theophany Latter-day Saints call the First Vision, written or dictated between 1832 and 1842, and contemporaries recorded several more. The accounts differ on his age, on whether he saw one personage or two, on what he went into the woods to ask, and on whether a religious revival prompted him. The Church now publishes all of them; how much the differences matter is the argument.

What is actually in dispute

Historians dispute whether the 1838 canonized account is an enlarged and reframed memory or a fuller telling of the same event, and whether the 'unusual excitement on the subject of religion' it describes can be dated to 1820 at all rather than to the documented Palmyra revival of 1824–25.

Four accounts, and none of them from 1820

There is no record of the First Vision from 1820. There is no record of it from the 1820s at all. The earliest surviving account was written in the summer of 1832, twelve years after the date the story itself assigns, in a record book, in the alternating handwriting of Joseph Smith and his scribe Frederick G. Williams. The Joseph Smith Papers editors date it between 20 July 1832, when Williams recorded that he began writing for Smith, and 22 September 1832, when a revelation changed Smith's vocabulary for priesthood in ways the manuscript does not yet reflect.¹

Three more firsthand accounts follow: a journal entry of 9 November 1835 recording what Smith told a visitor calling himself Joshua the Jewish minister; the manuscript history begun in 1838 and published in 1842, which was canonized in 1880 and is now Joseph Smith—History; and a letter written for the editor John Wentworth and printed in the Times and Seasons on 1 March 1842. The Church itself names these four, plus five descriptions recorded by contemporaries, and links all of them.²

They do not agree. Joseph is fourteen in three of them and in his sixteenth year in the earliest. He sees one personage in the earliest and two in the rest. He goes to pray for forgiveness in the earliest and to ask which church to join in the later ones. A revival frames the 1838 account and is absent from the 1832 one. Whether that pattern is what memory does to a story told over twenty years, or what a man does to a story he needs to serve a new purpose, is the entire argument.

1832: one personage, and a boy who wanted forgiveness

The 1832 history is unlike anything else in the canon because it is in Joseph Smith's own hand and reads like it. He describes being 'seriously imprest' about his soul at about twelve, and then: 'thus from the age of twelve years to fifteen I pondered many things in my heart concerning the sittuation of the world of mankind the contentions and divi[si]ons the wicke[d]ness and abominations and the darkness which pervaded the minds of mankind.' He was 'convicted of my sins.' He had already concluded, from reading, that 'there was no society or denomination that built upon the gospel of Jesus Christ as recorded in the new testament.'³

Then the vision: 'and while in the attitude of calling upon the Lord <in the 16th year of my age> a piller of light above the brightness of the sun at noon day come down from above and rested upon me and I was filled with the spirit of god and the <Lord> opened the heavens upon me and I saw the Lord and he spake unto me saying Joseph <my son> thy sins are forgiven thee.'⁴ The angle brackets are the Papers' notation for an insertion; 'in the 16th year of my age' was written in above the line. One personage. The speaker identifies himself: 'I am the Lord of glory I was crucifyed for the world.'

The verdict on the churches is there, but it is delivered rather than asked for: 'the world lieth in sin at this time and none doeth good no not one they have turned asside from the gospel.' There is no question about which church to join, no struggle with a dark power, no 'This is My Beloved Son.' The CES Letter reduces this to five bullet points — no two beings, twelve years later, age fifteen not fourteen, no church question, no satanic attack — and that list is now how most members first encounter the problem.⁵

The document was never published in Smith's lifetime, never quoted, and never mentioned in a Church publication for 133 years. Levi Edgar Young, a president of the Seventy, told LaMar Petersen in 1953 that he had obtained permission to read a 'strange' account of the First Vision and had been told not to copy it or say what it contained. It reached the public in 1965, in a BYU master's thesis.⁶

1835: two personages, and many angels

On 9 November 1835 a man with a three-inch grey beard, a sea-green frock coat and a habit of shutting his eyes while he spoke arrived at Joseph Smith's house in Kirtland and gave his name as Joshua the Jewish minister. He was Robert Matthews. Smith described his appearance in some detail, then told him the story, and Warren Parrish wrote it down.

This is the account with the walking footsteps: 'I made a fruitless attempt to pray, my toung seemed to be swolen in my mouth, so that I could not utter, I heard a noise behind me like some person walking towards me.' Then: 'I called on the Lord in mighty prayer, a pillar of fire appeared above my head, it presently rested down upon me [w.o. my] head, and filled me with Joy unspeakable, a personage appeared in the midst of this pillar of flame which was spread all around, and yet nothing consumed, another personage soon appeard like unto the first, he said unto me thy sins are forgiven thee, he testified unto me that Jesus Christ is the Son of God; <and I saw many angels in this vision> I was about 14 years old when I received this first communication.'⁷

Two personages, and neither named. The second testifies that Jesus is the Son of God, which is a strange thing for Jesus to say and a natural thing for the Father to say — but the introduction 'This is My Beloved Son' is not there. And there are angels in the grove, added above the line, which appear in no other account.

Five days later Erastus Holmes, a Methodist recently excommunicated for hosting Mormon elders in his house, came to inquire about the church. To him, and to the same scribe, Smith summarized his life 'say from 6, years old up to the time I received the first visitation of Angels which was when I was about 14, years old.'⁸ FAIR argues it is absurd to read this as a contradiction of what Smith said five days earlier to the same man holding the pen, and that the 'Angels' are the angels already mentioned. The Tanners argue the opposite, and add a documented alteration: the phrase appeared as 'first visitation of angels' when the Millennial Star printed it in 1853 and as 'my first vision' when the History of the Church printed it later.⁹

1838: the version that became scripture

Joseph Smith began the multivolume manuscript history in the spring of 1838 at Far West, in the middle of the worst institutional crisis of his life: Oliver Cowdery, David Whitmer, Lyman Johnson and William McLellin had all been cut off, the Kirtland bank had failed, and the Fanny Alger scandal had followed him west. The history opens by explaining that it is written to put 'all inquirers after truth in possession of the facts.'

It begins with the revival: 'Some time in the second year after our removal to Manchester, there was in the place where we lived an unusual excitement on the subject of religion. It commenced with the Methodists, but soon became general among all sects in that region of country . . . and great multitudes united themselves to the different religious parties.' Joseph is 'at this time in my fifteenth year,' and four of his family join the Presbyterians.¹⁰ Then James 1:5, the woods, the unseen power that binds his tongue, and: 'When the light rested upon me I saw two personages (whose brightness and glory defy all description) standing above me in the air. One of them spake unto me calling me by name and said (pointing to the other) "This is my beloved Son, Hear him."'

The purpose of the prayer is now explicit and different: 'My object in going to enquire of the Lord was to know which of all the sects was right, that I might know which to join.' The answer: 'I was answered that I must join none of them, for they were all wrong, and the Personage who addressed me said that all their Creeds were an abomination in his sight, that those professors were all corrupt.'¹¹

Everything that makes the vision doctrinally load-bearing — two embodied and separate divine persons, a categorical verdict on all Christendom, a call — arrives here. Bushman's explanation is that Smith had grown into an understanding of what had happened to him: in 1832 'he explained the vision as he must have first understood it in 1820 — as a personal conversion.' Palmer's explanation is that a forgiveness epiphany was rebuilt as a commission at exactly the moment Smith needed his authority underwritten.¹² Neither reading can be settled from the documents, which is why the argument has not ended.

1842: Wentworth, and the story finally goes to press

The vision was first published not by Joseph Smith and not in America but by Orson Pratt, in an 1840 missionary pamphlet printed in Edinburgh.¹³ Two years later Smith published his own version, at the request of John Wentworth of the Chicago Democrat, who wanted material for a friend writing a history of New Hampshire. Smith asked only that it be published 'entire, ungarnished, and without misrepresentation.'

The Wentworth account says: 'When about fourteen years of age I began to reflect upon the importance of being prepared for a future state,' and found 'a great clash in religious sentiment.' The vision: 'I was enwrapped in a heavenly vision and saw two glorious personages who exactly resembled each other in features, and likeness, surrounded with a brilliant light which eclipsed the sun at noon-day. They told me . . . that none of them was acknowledged of God as his church and kingdom. And I was expressly commanded to "go not after them," at the same time receiving a promise that the fulness of the gospel, should at some future time be made known unto me.'¹⁴

Two personages, exactly resembling each other, and no 'This is My Beloved Son.' A month later the Times and Seasons ran the 1838 manuscript history with those words in it. Vogel's edition notes that the similarities between the Wentworth letter and Pratt's 1840 pamphlet are close enough to suggest Smith worked from the pamphlet — which would mean the prophet's own published account of his own vision was partly modeled on a missionary tract.¹⁵

The revival that will not stay in 1820

In 1967 Wesley P. Walters, a Presbyterian minister in Marissa, Illinois, reasoned that he could not disprove a vision but could check the facts Smith gave as its context. He worked through the Methodist Magazine year by year, finding revivals everywhere and none in Palmyra for 1819, 1820 or 1821 — and then, in the March 1825 issue, the Reverend George Lane's own account of a Palmyra revival that had begun the previous summer. 'Such a revival does not pass from the scene,' Walters wrote, 'without leaving some traces in the records and publications of the period.'¹⁶

The numbers are the argument. The Palmyra Presbytery, meeting in September 1820, reported 'there has been no remarkable revival of religion within our bounds.'¹⁷ Palmer, working the same records, counts 103 people joining the Palmyra Presbyterian church in 1824–25 against fourteen in 1820–21, and Baptist membership rising from 132 to 219 in the 1824–25 conference year against no year between 1818 and 1825 with more than a dozen convert baptisms. He concludes that Joseph's 'experience may have occurred in 1820, but the revival that the Smiths participated in occurred in 1824–25,' and that the two were combined in 1838.¹⁸

The corroborating detail is who was there. Neither the Reverend Benjamin Stockton nor the Reverend George Lane held an appointment anywhere near Palmyra before 1824, and William Smith remembered his brother getting the idea of asking God which church to join from a Lane sermon on James 1:5 preached during a joint revival.¹⁹

The faithful replies came fast and have not stopped: Milton Backman on the religious atmosphere of 1819–20, Larry Porter on George Lane, and Richard Lloyd Anderson on a June 1818 Palmyra camp meeting that he argued satisfies every requirement of Smith's description without conflation. D. Michael Quinn documented a June 1820 Methodist camp meeting, though Vogel objected that redefining 'revival' to include any camp meeting changes the terms of the dispute rather than answering it.²⁰

What is striking is where the concession finally landed. Ann Taves, writing in BYU Studies — the Church university's own journal — states that 'the 1824–25 revival in Palmyra . . . is attested by Presbyterian, Baptist, and Methodist membership records,' and reports being surprised at 'how much evidence there was for a revival in 1824 of the sort Smith described in his 1838 account, especially given how little I had heard about it and how sketchy the evidence was for 1820.' Bushman's own endnote grants that on Lucy Smith's Presbyterian affiliation, 'all the circumstantial evidence notwithstanding for an 1820 membership, the date . . . remains a matter of debate.'²¹

The silence of the 1830s

In 1966 James B. Allen, later assistant church historian, published in Dialogue what remains the most consequential finding on this topic and did it from inside the faith. He traced the vision through the church's own publications of its founding decade and did not find it. The 1833 Book of Commandments makes several references to the Book of Mormon and none to any earlier vision. The Evening and the Morning Star does not carry it. Oliver Cowdery's letters in the Messenger and Advocate — the first published history of the church, written with Smith's approval — describe the angel and the plates and no theophany.

The 1835 Doctrine and Covenants is the sharpest case. Its preface declared that it contained 'the leading items of religion which we have professed to believe,' and it included the Lectures on Faith, which teach that the Godhead consists of two personages. Allen noted that in demonstrating that doctrine 'no mention was made of Joseph Smith having seen them, nor was any reference made to the first vision in any part of the publication.'²² What the 1835 volume did contain, carried forward from 1830, was the language that after 'it was truly manifested unto this first elder that he had received a remission of his sins he was entangled again in the vanities of the world,' after which 'God ministered unto him by an holy angel.'²³ A remission of sins, and then an angel. That is the church's own account of its own origin as printed in its own scripture in 1833 and 1835.

Parley P. Pratt's Voice of Warning, the first important missionary pamphlet, treats prophecy, the Book of Mormon, the resurrection and revelation, and says nothing of the vision; Allen concluded that belief in it was not a prerequisite for conversion in the 1830s. His summary judgment: 'an understanding of the story of Joseph Smith's vision dawned only gradually upon the membership of the Church during his lifetime, and . . . new and important uses were made of the story after his death.'²⁴

Harper's work traces what those uses became. The Pearl of Great Price was canonized in October 1880, on George Q. Cannon's motion at general conference. Only afterward did references in conference multiply. 'Generally speaking,' Harper writes, 'the earliest Latter-day Saints did not know much, if anything, about Joseph Smith's first vision. It was not typically taught by missionaries or regarded as a point of orthodox belief. That changed gradually after it was canonized in 1880.' By 2002 a Church president could say that if the vision did not occur, 'then this work is a fraud.'²⁵ Harper's own conclusion is that this was not inevitable: 'Over two centuries, the stakes of his claim have been raised. Joseph Smith's first vision is now all or nothing.'²⁶

What the institution says now

In November 2013 the Church published 'First Vision Accounts' on its own website. It names all four firsthand accounts, describes what each emphasizes, links each to the Joseph Smith Papers, notes the five secondhand contemporary descriptions, and says: 'The various accounts of the First Vision tell a consistent story, though naturally they differ in emphasis and detail.'²⁷ Of the 1832 account it says without hedging that Joseph 'wrote that "the Lord" appeared and forgave him of his sins.' Of the 1835 account it says the retelling 'emphasizes his attempt to discover which church was right, the opposition he felt as he prayed, and the appearance of one divine personage who was followed shortly by another,' and that it 'also notes the appearance of angels in the vision.'

Saints, published in 2018, does something different. It narrates. Chapter 2 opens: 'Joseph rose early on a spring morning in 1820 and set out for the woods near his home.' He kneels, asks 'O Lord, what church shall I join?', his tongue swells, footsteps come, darkness closes in. Then the two personages, and: '"Joseph," the Savior said, "thy sins are forgiven." His burden lifted, Joseph repeated his question: "What church shall I join?"' It is a composite, sourced in the chapter notes, and it resolves the central difference between 1832 and 1838 by putting both questions in Joseph's mouth in sequence.

John Turner, a non-Mormon historian writing in 2025, states the limit of what the method can do: 'Whether or not heavenly beings appeared to Joseph is a matter of faith, not historical inquiry. It is impossible for scholars to penetrate the marrow of anyone's religious experience. At the same time, regardless of its particular content or exact date, there seems little reason to doubt the story's core: that a spiritually distraught young man sought, saw, and heard the Lord.'²⁸ That is roughly where the neutral scholarship sits — which is not where either the institution or its critics have chosen to stand.

Notes

"History, circa Summer 1832," transcript pp. 1–6, The Joseph Smith Papers. The editors' introduction calls it "the only narrative of the foundational spiritual events of JS's early life that includes his own handwriting." "History, circa Summer 1832," editorial introduction, The Joseph Smith Papers: "The terminology of the existing documentary record, therefore, coupled with the date of Williams's appointment as scribe, suggests that the history was most likely composed between 20 July and 22 September 1832." Note that the introduction is the editors' work (tagged neutral-academic), not Joseph Smith's. → source ↩
"First Vision Accounts," Gospel Topics Essays (2013/2016). The essay names the 1832, 1835, 1838 and 1842 accounts and states that Joseph Smith "wrote or assigned scribes to write four different accounts of the vision." FAIR Answers wiki, reproducing Richard L. Anderson, "Joseph Smith's Testimony of the First Vision," Ensign, April 1996, which enumerates nine contemporary reports including Orson Pratt's 1840 pamphlet, Orson Hyde's 1842 German revision of it, Levi Richards's 1843 diary, an 1843 newspaper interview and Alexander Neibaur's 1844 journal. → source ↩
"History, circa Summer 1832," transcript p. 2, The Joseph Smith Papers. The Papers' diplomatic transcript marks cancellations and insertions; quotation here silently omits the strike-through markers around "of the" before "minds of mankind." → source ↩
"History, circa Summer 1832," transcript p. 3, The Joseph Smith Papers. Angle brackets are the Papers' notation for text inserted above the line; the manuscript reads "a piller ~~fire~~ light," with "fire" struck out. → source ↩
Jeremy Runnells, Letter to a CES Director, 33. The list appears immediately after Runnells quotes the 1832 passage in full and notes that the Church "admits" four accounts in its November 2013 essay. → source ↩
Jerald and Sandra Tanner, The Case Against Mormonism, vol. 1, 99, reproducing LaMar Petersen's notes of a 3 February 1953 interview with Levi Edgar Young: "Said it was a 'strange' account of the First Vision. Was put back in vault. Remains unused, unknown." This is a counter-cult reproduction of a third party's private notes and should be treated accordingly. James B. Allen, "The Significance of Joseph Smith's 'First Vision' in Mormon Thought," Dialogue 1, no. 3 (Autumn 1966), on the manuscript "brought to light in 1965 by Paul R. Cheesman, a graduate student at Brigham Young University." Allen dated it circa 1833; the Joseph Smith Papers date it to summer 1832. → source ↩
Joseph Smith, Journal, 1835–1836, entry for 9 November 1835 (scribe Warren Parrish), describing a man who "introduced himself to me, calling himself by the name of Joshua the Jewish minister," with "a beard about 3 inches in length which is quite grey" and "a sea green frock coat, & pantaloons of the same." Joseph Smith diary, 9 November 1835, as transcribed in Dan Vogel, ed., Early Mormon Documents (Signature Books, 1996), 1:60. The bracketed "[w.o. my]" and the angle brackets are Vogel's editorial notation; the same text appears in Scott H. Faulring, ed., An American Prophet's Record, 119. → source ↩
Joseph Smith, Journal, 1835–1836, transcript p. 37, entry for 14 November 1835, The Joseph Smith Papers. The Papers' editorial note on the 16 November 1835 revelation identifies Holmes as a Clermont County, Ohio, merchant who had been excommunicated from the Methodist church "for receiving, the Elders of the church of the latter-day Saints into his house." → source ↩
FAIR Answers wiki, "Multiple accounts of the First Vision/1835/Mentions 'Angels'": "It is patently absurd to believe that Joseph Smith would contradict himself in less than one week while telling the same exact story in front of the same exact scribe (Warren Parrish)." Jerald and Sandra Tanner, Changes in Joseph Smith's History, 30, comparing Millennial Star 15:424 ("the first visitation of angels") with History of the Church 2:312 ("my first vision"); the Deseret News printing of 29 May 1852 also reads "angels." The Tanners' companion pamphlet Joseph Smith's Strange Account of the First Vision makes the same argument at greater length. → source ↩
Joseph Smith, history as published in Times and Seasons 3 (1842): 727–28, quoted in Jerald and Sandra Tanner, Mormonism: Shadow or Reality?, 156. The same passage is Joseph Smith—History 1:5–7. → source ↩
"History, 1838–1856, volume A-1 [23 December 1805–30 August 1834]," transcript p. 3, The Joseph Smith Papers. Angle brackets in the manuscript mark insertions; "gracefully" is struck out before "gradually." "History, circa June 1839–circa 1841 [Draft 2]," transcript p. 3, The Joseph Smith Papers. The same wording appears in Times and Seasons, 1 April 1842, and at Joseph Smith—History 1:18–19. → source ↩
Richard Lyman Bushman, Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling (Knopf, 2005), quoted in the BYU Studies review of Grant Palmer's An Insider's View of Mormon Origins: "Even twelve years after the event the First Vision's personal significance for him still overshadowed its place in the divine plan for restoring the church." Grant H. Palmer, An Insider's View of Mormon Origins (Signature Books, 2002), 248–51, 271–72, where the accounts are set out in parallel and Palmer argues Joseph "then told a revised and more impressive version of his epiphany." → source ↩
Allen, "The Significance of Joseph Smith's 'First Vision,'" Dialogue 1, no. 3: the story "was published first in 1840 by Orson Pratt as a missionary tool, and two of Joseph Smith's own versions were published in 1842." The pamphlet itself, An Interesting Account of Several Remarkable Visions (Edinburgh, 1840), is not held in this corpus. → source ↩
Joseph Smith, "Church History," Times and Seasons 3 (1 March 1842): 706–8, reproduced in Dan Vogel, ed., Early Mormon Documents, 1:185, and in FAIR's transcription of Times and Seasons 3/9. Joseph Smith, "Church History," Times and Seasons, 1 March 1842, 706–10, as quoted in Palmer, An Insider's View of Mormon Origins, 272. The ellipsis is Palmer's; the bracketed clarification "[churches]" is his as well and has been removed here. → source ↩
Dan Vogel, ed., Early Mormon Documents, 1:185, editorial note: "Similarities between the Wentworth letter and the text of Orson Pratt's An Interesting Account of Several Remarkable Visions, published in 1840, suggest that Smith used Pratt's work as a model." The note is Vogel's argument, not part of the document. → source ↩
Steven C. Harper, "Raising the Stakes: How Joseph Smith's First Vision Became All or Nothing," BYU Studies Quarterly 59, no. 2 (2020), narrating Walters's search: "He worked his way through the 1819 issues, finding plenty on revivals but nothing in Palmyra. He found nothing for 1820, nor 1821, and so on. Finally, in the March 1825 issue, he discovered Reverend George Lane's account of a Palmyra revival that started the preceding summer." Wesley P. Walters, "New Light on Mormon Origins from the Palmyra (N.Y.) Revival," as quoted in Dialogue 15, no. 2, in the course of a Latter-day Saint response to him. → source ↩
Walters, "New Light on Mormon Origins from the Palmyra Revival," Dialogue 4, no. 1 (Spring 1969), 66, quoting the report of the Presbytery meeting of 8 September. → source ↩
Palmer, An Insider's View of Mormon Origins, 255, 258, citing Palmyra Presbyterian and Baptist church records and noting that "fifteen accounts of this 1824–25 revival have been found" while "there is not a single reference to a Palmyra revival between 1818 and 1821 in any of the major religious periodicals." → source ↩
Ann Taves, "First Vision Controversies: Implications for Accounts of Mormon Origins," BYU Studies, on Stockton and Lane: "Neither Stockton nor Lane had appointments anywhere near Palmyra prior to 1824," and on William Smith's recollection of Lane preaching "a sermon on 'what church shall I join?'" → source ↩
Bushman, Rough Stone Rolling, endnote to pp. 36–40: "Walters, 'New Light,' 227–44, stirred a debate on the timing of the revivals. For the argument that revivals in 1824 were the background for Joseph's first vision, see Marquardt and Walters, Inventing Mormonism, 15–41. The rebuttal is in Backman, First Vision, 53–111." On Quinn's redefinition and Vogel's objection, see Dialogue 41, no. 4, 11. → source ↩
Taves, "First Vision Controversies," BYU Studies. Taves adds that she was surprised "at how long it took me to realize that I didn't have to privilege Joseph's histories over Lucy's." Bushman, Rough Stone Rolling, notes to pp. 36–40, on the date of Lucy Mack Smith's engagement with Presbyterianism: "It is possible to argue plausibly that she did not join until later Palmyra revivals in 1824." → source ↩
Allen, "The Significance of Joseph Smith's 'First Vision,'" Dialogue 1, no. 3, 32: "In 1833 the Church published the Book of Commandments, forerunner to the present Doctrine and Covenants, and again no reference was made to Joseph's first vision, although several references were made to the Book of Mormon and the circumstances of its origin." Allen, Dialogue 1, no. 3, 32. The 1835 Doctrine and Covenants is held in this corpus as a separate text from the current edition, so the omission can be checked directly. → source ↩
Doctrine and Covenants (1835 edition), section 2, paragraph 2, pp. 77–78; the same text appears at Book of Commandments 24:6–11 (1833) and in The Evening and the Morning Star, June 1832. Quoted here from a 1967 Dialogue correspondent who argued this passage is itself an allusion to the vision; the bracketed identifications of "this first elder" as Joseph Smith and the angel as Moroni are that correspondent's, not the text's. → source ↩
Allen, Dialogue 1, no. 3, 45. On Voice of Warning, Allen notes it contains "long sections on items important to missionaries of the 1830's . . . but nothing, again, on the first vision." → source ↩
Harper, "Raising the Stakes," BYU Studies Quarterly 59, no. 2 (2020), 23–58. Gordon B. Hinckley, "The Marvelous Foundation of Our Faith," General Conference, October 2002, as quoted in Runnells, Letter to a CES Director, 32. Hinckley made a similar statement in October 1998: "our entire case as members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints rests on the validity of this glorious First Vision." → source ↩
Harper, "Raising the Stakes," concluding section, which adds that this outcome came "not inevitably, but because of many contingent choices to believe." → source ↩
"First Vision Accounts," Gospel Topics Essays. The essay also notes that the two unpublished accounts "were generally forgotten until historians working for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints rediscovered and published them in the 1960s." → source ↩
"Hear Him," chapter 2 of Saints: The Story of the Church of Jesus Christ in the Latter Days, Volume 1, The Standard of Truth, 1815–1846 (2018). John G. Turner, Joseph Smith: The Rise and Fall of an American Prophet (Yale University Press, 2025), 22–23. → source ↩

Stories from the record

Human-scale episodes inside this topic, each anchored to a source.

The man in the sea-green coat

On 9 November 1835 a stranger walked into Joseph Smith's house in Kirtland and gave his name as Joshua the Jewish minister. Smith looked him over carefully enough to record a beard about three inches long and quite grey, long hair silvered with age, blue eyes, a fair complexion, a sea-green frock coat with matching pantaloons, a black fur hat with a narrow brim, and a habit of shutting his eyes with a scowl while speaking. He asked the man's name and got no definite answer. Then he told him the story of the vision — and that telling, written down by Warren Parrish, is the earliest surviving account that has two personages in it. The visitor was Robert Matthews, an itinerant prophet who called himself Matthias.

Sources: Journal, 1835–1836 · Early Mormon Documents, Volume 1

Erastus Holmes gets the short version

Five days later a man named Erastus Holmes arrived from Clermont County, Ohio, to ask about the establishment of the church. He had been a Methodist and had been excommunicated for letting Mormon elders into his house. Smith gave him a summary of his life 'from 6, years old up to the time I received the first visitation of Angels which was when I was about 14, years old.' Holmes stayed several days, went to meeting, dined with Smith, looked at the Egyptian mummies, and asked Smith to inquire of God when and where he should be baptized — which produced a revelation on 16 November. Smith wrote that Holmes was 'a verry candid man indeed and I am much pleased with him.' Almost nothing else about him is known.

Sources: Journal, 1835–1836

A minister in the magazine stacks

Wesley Walters could not disprove a vision, so he set out to check its furniture. He went through back issues of the Methodist Magazine looking for the Palmyra revival Joseph Smith had described. 1819: revivals everywhere, none in Palmyra. 1820: nothing. 1821: nothing. He kept going. In the March 1825 issue he found the Reverend George Lane's own account of a Palmyra revival that had begun the previous summer. Harper records that Walters was elated, and that his wife Helen eventually wondered whether the follow-up research had become overkill. It reset the entire field.

Sources: "Raising the Stakes: How Joseph Smith's Fi…

The account in the vault

In 1953 Levi Edgar Young, one of the presidents of the Seventy, told LaMar Petersen that his curiosity had been aroused by a reference in B. H. Roberts's Documentary History to 'documents from which these writings were compiled.' He asked to see them, was told to get higher permission, obtained it, and examined them. He was told not to copy them or say what they contained. According to Petersen's notes, Young called it a 'strange' account of the First Vision. It went back in the vault. The Tanners wrote to the Church Historian enclosing a dollar and asking for a photocopy; the letter was never answered. Twelve years later a BYU graduate student printed it in his thesis.

Sources: Joseph Smith's Strange Account of the Firs… · "The Significance of Joseph Smith's 'First…

The Methodist preacher who laughed

The 1838 history contains a scene no other account has. A few days after the vision, Joseph says, he happened to be in company with one of the Methodist preachers who had been active in the religious excitement, and took the occasion to tell him what he had seen. 'I was greatly surprised at his behaviour,' Joseph wrote, 'he treated my communication not only lightly but with great contempt, saying it was all of the Devil, that there was no such thing as visions or revelations in these days.' The rebuff is the hinge of the persecution narrative that follows — and Harper has argued that it is also the best explanation for why Joseph then said almost nothing about the vision for a decade.

Sources: History, circa June 1839–circa 1841 [Draft… · FAIR Answers wiki, First Vision topical pa…

Mormon Stories leads

Search phrases for the Mormon Stories transcript database. Episode numbers are deliberately absent — the transcript index was not queried for this build, and a guessed episode number is worse than none.

1832 First Vision account Joseph Smith own handwriting sixteenth year of my ageEpisodes walking through the earliest account line by line, especially any that read the manuscript rather than a summary of it, and any discussion of when and how the document became public.

Wesley Walters Palmyra revival 1824 Marquardt Inventing MormonismDiscussion of the revival dating dispute, ideally with a historian who has worked the Presbyterian, Baptist and Methodist membership records rather than repeating the summary.

Grant Palmer An Insider's View of Mormon Origins church discipline CES instructorPalmer's own account of the parallel-column comparison and of what happened to him after publication; also any CES or seminary teachers describing how they were trained to handle the accounts.

Gospel Topics essays First Vision Accounts 2013 who wrote them why nowInterviews with historians involved in drafting or reviewing the essays, and with members who first learned of the multiple accounts from the essay rather than from a critic.

first visitation of angels 1835 journal Erastus Holmes Warren ParrishAnyone working through the two November 1835 entries in detail, including the History of the Church wording change from 'angels' to 'first vision.'

Steven Harper memory First Vision canonization 1880 all or nothing HinckleyTreatments of how the vision moved from personal narrative to the church's central truth claim, and of what happens pastorally when a claim is framed as all or nothing.

People who also appear elsewhere

Joseph Smith Jr.Warren Parrish Frederick G. Williams Orson Pratt Gordon B. Hinckley