Item Detail
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32318
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1
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5
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English
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How Did Joseph Smith Become a Seer? Insights from the John Alger First Vision Account
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Journal of Mormon History
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2021
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47
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4
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Champaign, IL
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University of Illinois Press
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135-141
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"[John Alger's First Vision] account, nevertheless, for three reasons recommends itself as relaying an accurate narrative from the prophet : first, Alger had been a Kirtland-period Latter-day Saint with an unusually close connection to Joseph Smith Jr. and the Smith family. His sister Fanny was an insider within the Smith household, living with them for some three and a half years, and in several accounts actually becoming part of the family by clandestinely marrying Joseph. Second, John Alger recalled precise details of the narration—details that alongside the grandeur of the event related, ought indeed to have 'impressed' such a narration on his mind; namely, its setting in the home of the prophet’s father, its striking verbal content, and the (literally) pointed nonverbal gesture the prophet used to support it. And, having been between the ages of eleven and seventeen at the time, Alger was old enough to recognize the importance of the telling and mark it in his memory. Third, as noted above and detailed below, Smith’s First Vision as remembered by John Alger coheres remarkably with the contexts in which the vision occurred." [Author]
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