“Was there a time when Church leaders concealed the fact that there were various accounts of Joseph Smith’s First Vision?,” First Vision Accounts (2022)
“Was there a time when Church leaders concealed the fact that there were various accounts of Joseph Smith’s First Vision?,” First Vision Accounts
Was there a time when Church leaders concealed the fact that there were various accounts of Joseph Smith’s First Vision?
While scholars have long been aware of Joseph Smith’s accounts of his First Vision, Church leaders and manuals have almost always drawn from the narrative found in the published history of Joseph Smith, which he began in 1838. This version is found in the Pearl of Great Price. It is no surprise that leaders focused on this account: it is the most detailed account, was created to be an official history, was the most widely available account, and was made scripture in 1880. The 1842 account, found in Joseph Smith’s letter to John Wentworth, was the first account to be published and has also been widely available in print since Joseph Smith’s day. Both of these accounts were included in the published history of the Church.
The 1832 and 1835 accounts were not widely known before the 1960s. Joseph’s 1832 history was written in a record later used as a letter book. As with many other early and valuable records, Church Historian Joseph Fielding Smith appears to have limited access to this account for a period, but he later made it available to researchers. In 1965 a graduate student from Brigham Young University obtained permission to publish a transcript of this history, making it more accessible to researchers and the public. The 1835 account was from an entry in Joseph Smith’s unpublished journal and was first published in 1966. In 1970, the Church’s magazine The Improvement Era published an article drawing on all four accounts. Even so, the scriptural account continued to be the most familiar to Church members.
Awareness of these lesser-known accounts among Church members increased in the early 2000s, in part through the Church’s own efforts to make them widely available through its website and the Joseph Smith Papers Project.