Appearance
Multiple Accounts
The claim:
"There are at least 4 different first vision accounts by Joseph Smith, which the Church admits in its November 2013 First Vision Accounts essay."[1]
The CES Letter lists the 1832, 1835, 1838, and 1842 accounts, highlights differences between them, and presents the existence of multiple versions as inherently damaging.
If someone really saw God, why would they tell the story differently each time?
What the accounts actually say
Joseph Smith recorded or dictated four firsthand accounts of the First Vision between 1832 and 1842. Five additional people documented the experience during his lifetime after hearing him describe it.[2]
Nine accounts total. More documentation than survives for Moses at the burning bush, Isaiah's temple vision, or Paul on the road to Damascus.[3]
| 1832 | 1835 | 1838 | 1842 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Context | Private journal, partly in Joseph's own handwriting | Journal entry by scribe Warren Parrish after a conversation with Robert Matthews | Official history dictated to scribes; later canonized | Letter to Chicago newspaper editor John Wentworth |
| Who appeared | "The Lord opened the heavens upon me and I saw the Lord" | "A personage" in a pillar of flame, then "another personage" | "Two Personages" — one says: "This is My Beloved Son. Hear Him!" | "Two glorious personages who exactly resembled each other" |
| Age | "16th year of my age" (scribe insertion)[4] | About 14 | 14 (spring 1820) | "About fourteen years of age" |
| Primary motive | Forgiveness of sins; already concluded churches had apostatized | "To know which of all the sects was right" | Which church to join (prompted by James 1:5) | Religious excitement; desire to know which church was right |
| Unique details | Emphasis on the Atonement and personal redemption | Mentions angels; describes a dark force before the light | Satanic opposition binding his tongue; specific dialogue | Most concise; also contains the Articles of Faith |
The CES Letter treats this variation as a smoking gun. Look at it from the other direction.
Seven elements that never change
Across all four firsthand accounts — written over a decade, to different audiences, for different purposes — the core narrative holds:
- Joseph was young (14 or so).
- He was troubled by religious confusion among competing denominations.
- He went to a private place to pray.
- A divine light appeared.
- Heavenly being(s) appeared.
- He was told the existing churches were wrong.
- He was persecuted when he told others.[5]
The differences cluster around emphasis and framing. Not the skeleton of the event itself.
Paul told the same story three different ways
The CES Letter's logic — variation between accounts proves fabrication — doesn't just challenge Joseph Smith. It challenges the Apostle Paul.
Paul's conversion on the road to Damascus appears three times in Acts:
| Detail | Acts 9 | Acts 22 | Acts 26 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Companions heard the voice? | Yes (9:7) | No — "heard not the voice" (22:9) | Not specified |
| Companions saw light? | Not mentioned | Yes (22:9) | Not specified |
| Who fell to the ground? | Only Paul (9:4) | Paul (22:7) | All of them (26:14) |
| Commission from whom? | Ananias delivers instructions | Ananias delivers instructions | Jesus gives commission directly — no Ananias at all |
Did the companions hear the voice or not? Was Paul's commission delivered through Ananias or directly from Jesus?
No serious biblical scholar treats these variations as evidence Paul fabricated his conversion. They recognize he tailored each retelling to its audience.[6] John Tvedtnes observed: "There are fewer differences between the various accounts of Joseph Smith's first vision than between the five different accounts of Paul's first vision."[7]
Joseph recognized the parallel himself: "I had actually seen a light, and in the midst of that light I saw two Personages, and they did in reality speak to me... I have thought since, that I felt much like Paul."[8]
The 1832 account — one being or two?
The CES Letter's strongest single point: the 1832 account mentions "the Lord" without clearly distinguishing two personages. The implication is that Joseph's story grew from one being to two over time.
Read the text:
"The Lord opened the heavens upon me and I saw the Lord."[9]
"The Lord opened the heavens upon me" — then — "I saw the Lord." One being opens. Another is seen. The phrasing is at minimum ambiguous and arguably implies two distinct actors.[10]
Three of four firsthand accounts explicitly describe two personages. The fourth doesn't say "only one appeared." Absence of a detail is not denial of that detail. If you tell a friend "I saw Mom yesterday" and later mention Dad was there too, you haven't contradicted yourself. You've supplemented the first telling with information relevant to the second conversation.
And the "evolving theology" claim runs into a problem: D&C 76, recorded in February 1832 — the same year as the earliest First Vision account — already describes Joseph and Sidney Rigdon seeing the Father and the Son as separate beings (D&C 76:19-23).[11] Joseph's theology didn't move from one divine being to two during this period. He was already there.
Worth Acknowledging
The 1832 account's singular "I saw the Lord" is the strongest single piece of textual evidence for the claim that Joseph's story evolved. A fair reading should grapple with it directly. The counterweight: three of four firsthand accounts explicitly describe two personages, D&C 76 already describes the Father and Son separately in the same year, and the 1832 phrasing is at minimum ambiguous — not a flat denial of a second being.
The specific differences between accounts — age, motive, who appeared — are treated in detail in Contradictions.
This is how memory actually works
The CES Letter treats variation as evidence of deception. Memory researchers treat it as evidence of authenticity.
Steven C. Harper — BYU professor, Joseph Smith Papers volume editor, and the leading scholarly authority on the First Vision accounts — applied cognitive memory science to the accounts in his Oxford University Press book. His finding: the variation pattern matches what scientists document in genuine recollections of significant events.[12]
Richard Bushman: "Behind the simplest event are complex motives and many factual threads conjoining that will receive varying emphasis in different retellings... One would expect variations in the simplest and truest story."[13]
A fabricated story tends to become more fixed over time. The teller is working from a script, not a memory. A rehearsed narrative shows less variation, not more. The First Vision accounts show exactly the kind of natural variation that distinguishes real experience from invention.[12:1]
Nine accounts, not four
The CES Letter stops at four. The Joseph Smith Papers Project has documented nine accounts from Joseph's lifetime — four firsthand and five secondhand.[2:1]
| Source | Date | Key Details |
|---|---|---|
| Orson Pratt, An Interesting Account of Several Remarkable Visions | 1840 | First published account; pamphlet distributed in Scotland. Two personages. |
| Orson Hyde, Ein Ruf aus der Wüste | 1842 | First foreign-language account (German). Two personages. |
| Levi Richards, journal | June 11, 1843 | Diary entry after hearing Joseph preach publicly. |
| David Nye White, Pittsburgh Weekly Gazette | Sept. 15, 1843 | Newspaper interview: "a glorious personage in the light, and then another personage... 'Behold my beloved Son, hear him.'" |
| Alexander Neibaur, journal | May 24, 1844 | Vivid physical details — one personage had "blue eyes."[14] |
Neibaur's 1844 account — the last recorded before Joseph's death — is telling. "Blue eyes" is not the kind of detail someone adds to make a story sound more theological. It's the kind of detail someone remembers because they actually saw it.
The question of why the First Vision didn't appear in early written records is addressed in Late Appearance.
What the accounts reveal together
Read the four firsthand accounts side by side and each one contributes something the others don't:
| 1832 | 1835 | 1838 | 1842 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Deep personal anguish over sin | Angelic appearances and a dark force before the light | Specific dialogue: "This is My Beloved Son. Hear Him!" | Streamlined public summary for a non-member audience |
| Independent scripture study as a catalyst | Two personages described in sequence | Satanic opposition binding Joseph's tongue | "Two glorious personages who exactly resembled each other" |
| The Atonement and personal forgiveness | First account to mention angels | The founding event of a new dispensation | Source of the Articles of Faith |
A fabricator would have produced one polished version and stuck with it. Joseph produced multiple versions — each shaped by the audience, the context, and which dimension of the experience mattered most at the moment of telling.[10:1]
The best-documented theophany in history
Harper calls the First Vision "the best-documented theophany in history."[3:1] Scholars studying Moses's burning bush or Paul's Damascus road experience would be thrilled to have nine accounts — four firsthand and five secondhand — from within the eyewitness generation.
The Church's Gospel Topics Essay addresses the multiple accounts directly: "Historians expect that when an individual retells an experience in multiple settings to different audiences over many years, each account will emphasize various aspects of the experience and contain unique details."[5:1]
In historiography, multiple independent accounts are an asset, not a liability. They allow scholars to triangulate what happened, test consistency, and distinguish core narrative from peripheral detail. The First Vision's documentary record is unusually rich — not unusually suspicious.
Further Reading
- First Vision Accounts — Gospel Topics Essay
- Accounts of the First Vision — Joseph Smith Papers (all nine accounts)
- Steven C. Harper, First Vision: Memory and Mormon Origins (Oxford University Press, 2019)
Bottom line: The CES Letter presents multiple accounts as evidence of fabrication. Historians see the opposite — nine accounts from Joseph's lifetime make this the best-documented theophany in history. The seven core elements are consistent across every telling. The peripheral variation is exactly what memory science predicts for genuine experience, and exactly what the New Testament preserves for Paul's conversion. Multiple accounts don't weaken the First Vision. They strengthen it.
Runnells, CES Letter (2017), "First Vision," pp. 32-35. The CES Letter lists four accounts (1832, 1835, 1838, 1842), highlights differences between them, and claims they contain "direct contradictions." ↩︎
"Accounts of the First Vision," Joseph Smith Papers. https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/site/accounts-of-the-first-vision. The project documents four firsthand accounts and five contemporary secondhand accounts from Joseph's lifetime. ↩︎ ↩︎
Steven C. Harper, "The First Vision: The Best Documented Theophany in History," FAIR Conference, August 4, 2011. See also Harper, First Vision: Memory and Mormon Origins (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019). ↩︎ ↩︎
The phrase "in the 16th year of my age" in the 1832 account was inserted by scribe Frederick G. Williams, not written by Joseph Smith. See Dean C. Jessee, "The Earliest Documented Accounts of Joseph Smith's First Vision," in Exploring the First Vision, ed. Samuel Alonzo Dodge and Steven C. Harper (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, BYU, 2012). https://rsc.byu.edu/exploring-first-vision/earliest-documented-accounts-joseph-smiths-first-vision ↩︎
"First Vision Accounts," Gospel Topics Essays, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/gospel-topics-essays/first-vision-accounts?lang=eng ↩︎ ↩︎
"Why Are There Different Accounts of Paul's Conversion?" Scripture Central KnoWhy. https://scripturecentral.org/knowhy/why-are-there-different-accounts-of-pauls-conversion ↩︎
John A. Tvedtnes, cited in "First Vision," Debunking the CES Letter. https://debunking-cesletter.com/first-vision/ ↩︎
Joseph Smith--History 1:24-25, Pearl of Great Price. ↩︎
Joseph Smith, History, circa Summer 1832, pp. 1-3, Joseph Smith Papers. https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/history-circa-summer-1832/1 ↩︎
Steven C. Harper, "Evaluating Three Arguments Against Joseph Smith's First Vision," in Exploring the First Vision, ed. Dodge and Harper (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, BYU, 2012). https://rsc.byu.edu/exploring-first-vision/evaluating-three-arguments-against-joseph-smiths-first-vision ↩︎ ↩︎
Doctrine and Covenants 76:19-23. Recorded February 16, 1832: "We beheld the glory of the Son, on the right hand of the Father... And now, after the many testimonies which have been given of him, this is the testimony, last of all, which we give of him: That he lives!" ↩︎
Steven C. Harper, First Vision: Memory and Mormon Origins (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019). Harper applies cognitive memory science to the First Vision accounts, showing the variation pattern matches what scientists document in genuine recollections of significant events. ↩︎ ↩︎
Richard Lyman Bushman, Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005), 39. See also Bushman, "The First Vision Story Revived," in Exploring the First Vision, ed. Dodge and Harper (2012). https://rsc.byu.edu/exploring-first-vision/first-vision-story-revived ↩︎
Alexander Neibaur, journal entry, May 24, 1844. Neibaur recorded vivid physical details from Joseph's description, including the striking detail that one personage had "blue eyes." ↩︎