Item Detail
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28186
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1
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8
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English
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Suspicion or Trust : Reading the Accounts of Joseph Smith's First Vision
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No Weapon Shall Prosper : New Light on Sensitive Issues
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Provo, UT
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Religious Studies Center, BYU, in cooperation with Deseret Book Company
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63-75
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There are essentially three arguments against the First Vision. All of them begin with the premise that it simply could not have happened. The minister to whom Joseph reported the event announced that there were no such things in that day. Fawn Brodie wrote with literary grace to mask her historical deficiencies that Joseph concocted the vision years after he said it happened. Wesley Walters charged Joseph with inventing revivalism when there was none. So it became a foregone conclusion that Joseph failed to mention his vision for years and then gave conflicting accounts that did not match historical facts. This essay invites readers to question these unproven assumptions, placing higher priority on the testimonies of the only eyewitness, rather than the attacks of expert witnesses brought in by the prosecution to testify that he did not see what he said he did.
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Eight Contemporary Accounts of Joseph Smith's First Vision--What Do We Learn from Them?
Joseph Smith's First Vision : Confirming Evidences and Contemporary Accounts
Joseph Smith's Recitals of the First Vision
Joseph Smith's Testimony of the First Vision
Opening the Heavens : Accounts of Divine Manifestations 1820-1844
Personal Writings of Joseph Smith
The Early Accounts of Joseph Smith's First Vision
The Papers of Joseph Smith, Volume 1 : Autobiographical and Historical Writings