1820–2020
Four accounts in Joseph Smith's own voice, and they do not match
20 sources, ordered by evidentiary weight — primary and contemporary first, then documentary editions, then the argument. All of them are held as full text in the Mormon Corpus.
History, circa Summer 1832
Joseph Smith Jr. and Frederick G. Williams
The only account of the vision partly in Joseph Smith's own handwriting: one personage, forgiveness of sins, and 'the 16th year of my age.'
Book of Commandments (1833) and Doctrine and Covenants (1835 first edition)
Joseph Smith and others
The church's own foundational scripture in the 1830s says only that a remission of sins was 'manifested unto this first elder' before an angel ministered to him — no theophany, no two personages.
Journal, 1835–1836
Joseph Smith Jr., scribe Warren Parrish
Two retellings five days apart: two personages plus 'many angels' on 9 November, and 'the first visitation of Angels which was when I was about 14, years old' on 14 November.
History, 1838–1856, volume A-1 [23 December 1805–30 August 1834]
Joseph Smith Jr. and scribes
The manuscript behind the canonized account: the revival frame, the struggle with an unseen power, and 'I saw two personages.'
History, circa June 1839–circa 1841 [Draft 2]
Joseph Smith Jr. and scribes
The working draft of the 1838–39 history, carrying the 'join none of them, for they were all wrong' answer and the creeds-are-an-abomination language.
"Church History," 1 March 1842 (the Wentworth letter), Times and Seasons 3:706–10
Joseph Smith Jr.
Smith's own public summary for a newspaper editor: 'about fourteen years of age,' two personages, a commandment to 'go not after them,' and no 'This is My Beloved Son.'
Pearl of Great Price, Joseph Smith—History
Joseph Smith Jr.
The canonical text as Latter-day Saints read it today, canonized in 1880 — the version against which every other account is measured.
Early Mormon Documents, Volume 1
Dan Vogel, ed.
Transcripts of the 1832, 1835, 1838 and 1842 accounts in one place, with editorial notes on the Wentworth letter's apparent debt to Orson Pratt's 1840 pamphlet.
"First Vision Accounts," Gospel Topics Essays
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
The Church's own public acknowledgment of four firsthand accounts and five contemporary secondhand ones, and its position that they 'tell a consistent story.'
Saints, Volume 1: The Standard of Truth, 1815–1846, chapter 2, "Hear Him"
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
How the institution narrates the vision today — a composite told as continuous scene, opening with the forgiveness question and then the church question.
"The Significance of Joseph Smith's 'First Vision' in Mormon Thought," Dialogue 1, no. 3
James B. Allen
That the vision was absent from the Book of Commandments, the 1835 Doctrine and Covenants, early church periodicals and missionary literature, and that understanding of it 'dawned only gradually' on the membership.
Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling
Richard Lyman Bushman with Jed Woodworth
The standard believing-scholarly reading — that Smith first understood the vision as a personal conversion and only later saw its place in a restoration — and a frank note that the revival dating remains a matter of debate.
"Raising the Stakes: How Joseph Smith's First Vision Became All or Nothing," BYU Studies Quarterly 59, no. 2
Steven C. Harper
That the vision's all-or-nothing status is a historical development after the 1880 canonization, and narrates Walters's and Jessee's parallel discoveries in the 1960s.
"First Vision Controversies: Implications for Accounts of Mormon Origins," BYU Studies
Ann Taves
A concession inside a Church-university journal that the 1824–25 revival is attested by three denominations' membership records while the evidence for 1820 is 'sketchy.'
Joseph Smith: The Rise and Fall of an American Prophet
John G. Turner
A non-Mormon academic's framing: the differences are real, the vision's occurrence is a question of faith rather than of historical method, and the core of the story is not implausible.
FAIR Answers wiki, First Vision topical pages
FAIR (fairlatterdaysaints.org)
The best-developed faithful replies: that the 9 and 14 November 1835 entries are one event summarized twice, and that nine contemporary reports exist.
Joseph Smith's Strange Account of the First Vision (and companion Utah Lighthouse titles)
Jerald and Sandra Tanner
The counter-cult case that the story evolved from one personage to two, and the documented change from 'first visitation of angels' in the Millennial Star to 'my first vision' in History of the Church.
"New Light on Mormon Origins from the Palmyra Revival," Dialogue 4, no. 1 (roundtable)
Wesley P. Walters
The documentary case that no revival of the size Joseph Smith described occurred in Palmyra in 1819–21, and that the Presbytery reported 'no remarkable revival of religion within our bounds.'
An Insider's View of Mormon Origins
Grant H. Palmer
The parallel-column comparison of the accounts and the argument that a forgiveness epiphany was reframed in 1838 as a commission, with the revival moved from 1824–25 to 1820.
Letter to a CES Director ("the CES Letter")
Jeremy Runnells
The form in which the discrepancies reach most ordinary members today: a bulleted list of what the 1832 account does and does not contain.
