Joseph Smith's First Vision Accounts Explained

Join Casey Griffiths as he explores the locations and context where each primary account of the First Vision was written down. There are four accounts in which Joseph Smith was directly involved. Yet, these accounts aren't exactly the same. In this video Casey helps make sense of the context of each account. He also interviews Steve Harper, a Church History researcher who has extensively studied the First Vision.

If you want to dig a little deeper, check out some supplementary resources on the First Vision, found below.

General Background

Allen, James B., and John W. Welch. "Analysis of Joseph Smith’s Accounts of His First Vision." In Opening the Heavens: Accounts of Divine Manifestation, 1820-1844, edited by John W. Welch, 36-77. 2nd ed. Provo, UT/Salt Lake City: Brigham Young University Press/Deseret Book, 2017.

Jessee, Dean C.. "The Earliest Accounts of Joseph Smith's First Vision." In Opening the Heavens: Accounts of Divine Manifestation, 1820-1844, edited by John W. Welch, 1-35. 2nd ed. Provo, UT/Salt Lake City: Brigham Young University Press/Deseret Book, 2017.

Tvedtnes, John A. “Variants in the Stories of the First Vision of Joseph Smith and the Apostle Paul,” Interpreter: A Journal of Mormon Scripture 2 (2012): 73–86.

Some critics of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have noted that the different accounts of Joseph Smith’s first vision, though written by the prophet himself, vary in some details. They see this as evidence that the event did not take place and was merely invented to establish divine authority for his work. They fail to realize that the versions of Paul’s vision on the road to Damascus, in which the risen Christ appeared to him, also differ from one another. Indeed, they vary more than Joseph Smith’s accounts of his experience. This article examines those variants.

1832 Account

Pearl of Great Price Central, The 1832 First Vision Account 

Church History Matters Podcast, Why Are There Different Accounts of the First Vision?

Joseph Smith’s First Vision is foundational to our narrative of the Restoration today, but it was not always so from the Church’s beginning. So how did the First Vision go from what began as a very personal experience of Joseph’s, to growing in institutional significance for the whole Church as it has today? Also, given that there are unique differences in Joseph Smith’s 4 separate accounts of his First Vision, what role does our personal “hermeneutic” play in how we make sense of these? And what might a letter Joseph wrote from Indiana to his wife Emma tell us about the context of his 1832 account of his vision?

1835 Account

Pearl of Great Price Central, The 1835 First Vision Account 

Church History Matters Podcast, What's Unique About Joseph Smith's 1835 and 1838 Accounts of His First Vision? 

In 1835 Joseph Smith briefly received into his Kirtland, Ohio home an eccentric visitor who claimed to be a Jewish minister named Joshua. According to Joseph’s journal, it was to this supposedly Jewish man that he recounted what we know as Joseph’s second recorded account of the First Vision. This episode explores how Joseph’s perception that he was speaking with a Jewish man influenced the details he chose to share and the language he used to tell about his experience. Also, three years later, in 1838, Joseph moved to Far West, Missouri after a season of severe persecution in Kirtland and the apostasy of several Church members there. It was while in Far West, with the help of several scribes, that Joseph began recording his official history, which begins with the account of his First Vision that became the official version canonized in Latter-day Saint scripture. We’ll explore the unique details of this account and why it makes sense as the “official” account of Joseph’s vision. And we explore in depth perhaps the most controversial line of this account where Jesus said of the Christian sects of the day that “they were all wrong” and “that all their creeds were an abomination” to him. What did this mean? And what did this NOT mean?

1838 Account

Pearl of Great Price Central, The 1838 First Vision Account

Church History Matters Podcast, What's Unique About Joseph Smith's 1835 and 1838 Accounts of His First Vision? 

In 1835 Joseph Smith briefly received into his Kirtland, Ohio home an eccentric visitor who claimed to be a Jewish minister named Joshua. According to Joseph’s journal, it was to this supposedly Jewish man that he recounted what we know as Joseph’s second recorded account of the First Vision. This episode explores how Joseph’s perception that he was speaking with a Jewish man influenced the details he chose to share and the language he used to tell about his experience. Also, three years later, in 1838, Joseph moved to Far West, Missouri after a season of severe persecution in Kirtland and the apostasy of several Church members there. It was while in Far West, with the help of several scribes, that Joseph began recording his official history, which begins with the account of his First Vision that became the official version canonized in Latter-day Saint scripture. We’ll explore the unique details of this account and why it makes sense as the “official” account of Joseph’s vision. And we explore in depth perhaps the most controversial line of this account where Jesus said of the Christian sects of the day that “they were all wrong” and “that all their creeds were an abomination” to him. What did this mean? And what did this NOT mean?

1842 Account

Pearl of Great Price Central, The 1842 First Vision Account

Church History Matters Podcast, How Did Orson Pratt Influence Joseph Smith’s 1842 First Vision Narrative?

Did you know that the first time the story of Joseph Smith’s First Vision was ever printed was in a pamphlet written by apostle Orson Pratt and published in Scotland while Pratt was on a mission there in 1840? Intriguingly, Pratt's language from this pamphlet was used by Joseph Smith himself two years later, in 1842, when writing the story of his First Vision for a non-Latter-day Saint newspaper editor named John Wentworth. Pratt’s pamphlet also heavily influenced another insightful telling of Joseph’s vision written by his fellow apostle Orson Hyde which was published in Germany in 1842. In today's episode we dive into all three of these accounts.

Secondhand Accounts of the First Vision

Allen, James B.. "Eight Contemporary Accounts of Joseph Smith's First Vision - What Do We Learn from Them? ." Improvement Era 73, no. 4 (1970): 4-13.

One hundred and fifty years ago this spring, a 14-year-old boy named Joseph Smith, Jr., perplexed about questions on religion, walked on a “beautiful, clear day” to a wooded area where he had been cutting wood, approximately a quarter mile from his father’s house, and knelt in earnest prayer. The answer to that prayer, known now as the First Vision, has changed the course of the world and marked with brilliant surety the opening of the dispensation of the fulness of times, a period of preparation for the heralded and oft-prophesied second coming of Jesus Christ. With this vision came a divine call to young Joseph, who “save Jesus only” was destined to do more “for the salvation of men in this world, than any other man that ever lived in it.” (D&C 135:3.)

For the past 150 years, the story of the First Vision has been repeated on the street corner and from the pulpit, and has borne testimony to succeeding generations at the family hearthside. It has made the heart of the poet and musician sing, has sparked the mind and imagination, has been studied diligently, and has been submitted to the unrelenting light of research.

Here printed for the first time is a report on eight different accounts of the First Vision.

Church History Matters Podcast, How Do 2nd and 3rd Hand Accounts Add to Our Understanding of the First Vision?

Thousands of people heard Joseph Smith’s testimony first hand. Some of those testimonies included him telling about his First Vision experience. Some of those people who heard his witness wrote down the details of what they heard. Luckily, a few of those handwritten accounts have survived until today and some of them contain even more details about Joseph’s vision which add to our understanding of what happened in 1820 in the Sacred Grove in Palmyra, New York. In today’s episode we explore three of these second hand accounts and then one bonus third-hand account which contains a significant detail that no other account ever mentions.

Pearl of Great Price Central, Secondhand Accounts of the First Vision 

Pratt, Orson. Interesting Account of Several Remarkable Visions, and of the Late Discovery of Ancient American Records. Edinburgh: Ballantyne and Hughes, 1840.

Recommended Purchases

Harper, Steven C. Joseph Smith’s First Vision: A Guide to the Historical Accounts (Salt Lake City, UT: Deseret Book, 2012).

Harper, Steven C. First Vision: Memory and Mormon Origins (New York, N.Y.: Oxford University Press, 2019).

Muhlestein, Kerry. I Saw the Lord: Joseph’s First Vision Combined From Nine Accounts (Salt Lake City, UT: Deseret Book, 2020).