What I find interesting about this is the well maintained church records for the number of converts brought in during the revivals in the Palmyra area from 1824 to 1825. Add to this the statements of Lucy Mack and William Smith about the death of Alvin in Nov. of 1823 and the ensuing revival thereafter which inspired her and Joseph’s sisters to join the Presbyterian Church. Given their statements, the church records, many newspaper articles and such about this religious excitement in the area, no-one should doubt that a great revival was in progress after Alvin’s death.

I realize that a revival in 1824 doesn’t mean one wasn’t in progress in 1820, but there doesn’t seem to be many records confirming it. I think there’s just one mention of a camp meeting for the Methodist’s that involved drinking and someone getting hurt. Camp meeting= revival? Maybe, I don’t know.

All of the above I’ve known for some time and heard argued a lot. Here’s what I didn’t know… The Smith family moved from Vermont to Palmyra sometime around 1816. According to tax records, Joseph Smith Sr. bought the Manchester property (close to Palmyra) in 1819 and paid taxes in 1820 through 1822 at the same rate. The 1823 tax records show a marked increase in the property value for the Manchester land indicating that improvements had been made to the property some time in 1822. These improvements typically would have included a cabin or small home and land cleared for farming. Assuming that the increase in property value did mean the addition of a log cabin and land cleared for farming in 1822, the statement about a “great excitement” on the subject of religion two years after moving to Manchester fits perfectly with the already discussed revivals in 1824.

In-order for the 1838 version of the First Vision to work, Joseph Smith Sr. would have had to buy the Manchester property in 1818 and move in that same year. He then would need to somehow avoid paying taxes until 1820 and then only pay on the land as unimproved until 1823. Meanwhile he was still paying road taxes in Palmyra until 1823 which he wouldn’t have owed once he moved to Manchester. We then must believe that a large revival also occurred in 1820 but somehow avoided detection by the prominent religions in the area as none of them report any significant increase in membership that year. I think the evidence points most determinately towards the move to Manchester in 1822 and the revivals of 1824 (which puts the First Vision in the spring of 1824), or in other words, at least six months after Moroni’s visit.

So my question is, how do church apologists answer this?

Context is important.

As I’ve noted before, too often we answer out of our own context, from our own logic or reckoning and do not even thing that we might not know or our logic may not be complete.

A major point I’ve gotten every time I study philosophy is that the “logic” that other ages has seen as airtight and solid and irrefutable leaks like a sieve over and over again, especially if you do not share the presuppositions.

Stephen (#15) I’m glad that I’m not alone in finding the positives available in receiving all of the accounts. I made a similar parallel to the Gospels in the talk I gave on the First Vision as a part of the Restoration. I think that understanding the intended audiences is important. Didn’t Joseph himself say that the key to interpreting scripture (and arguably, by extension, sacred history) is to discern the question that led to the inspired word?

Thanks to all for the good insights, thoughts, and productive questions!

I just wanted to point out that the idea that the “heavens were closed” during the Apostasy has been expressly and specifically rejected by the Church’s leadership.

“The line of priesthood authority was broken. But mankind was not left in total darkness or completely without revelation or inspiration. The idea that with the Crucifixion of Christ the heavens were closed and that they opened in the First Vision is not true. The Light of Christ would be everywhere present to attend the children of God; the Holy Ghost would visit seeking souls. The prayers of the righteous would not go unanswered.”

Boyd K. Packer, “The Light of Christ,” Ensign, Apr. 2005, 11 (quoted on Church website at: http://www.lds.org/ldsnewsroom/).

I think we often mistakenly think that the absence of priesthood keys during the Apostasy meant an absence of communication between God and man during the Apostasy. But as Elder Packer makes clear, that is not the case. God didn’t stop communicating with man during the Apostasy.

MattM (#5), that’s not what I had meant, but now that you put it that way, I think you may have a valid point. Of course, the question then becomes whether or not this is a requirement for apostolic service. I seriously doubt we can get a definitive answer on this particular point, but given my earlier typology of visions, we might be able to say that at least a Type II theophany (dream-vision) is required for apostolic service.

As I think about it now, however, I also completely ignored those who saw Christ as recorded in the Book of Mormon. I would account their experience as somewhat different, however. It was still an intensely spiritual and powerful experience, but for some reason it doesn’t quite seem to be the same as what JS experienced, or even what Paul or Moses experienced. Not that it wasn’t powerful or highly influential, but it seems to have involved some sort of suspension of the normal ‘rules’ that are normally involved in these things. I’m not sure what all this means now–oh well.

I do see some possible justification for the event indicating designation as a prophet–many prophetic careers were started with a similar event (Moses, Lehi & Paul are three that are easily cited, although Lehi may a poor example, since we do not know that his prophetic career started at that point).

Alternatives to my explanation strike me as less efficient, as if seeking unnaturally strained rationales of Joseph’s scripture language style in that already-accustomed, already-welcoming historical and folk-literary culture. Or to use plain English (heh, heh!), Joseph spoke scripture as both he and his listeners would expect it to sound. But they scarcely stopped to ponder the matter consciously. Scripture, to these people, automatically had a certain sound, so that was the way to speak it and to read it. And even the least educated among them – if blessed with a literary bent – could wax rather eloquent when their conversations turned from matters of the weather or politics to matters of eternity. Lifetimes of Bible-reading and preacher-listening had equipped them for such performance, just as with LDS children who know how to pray in Thee-Thou style. The spelling or grammar of young Joseph Smith and his peers might be atrocious at times, but oh, the power of some of their religious language!

I am going out of town in the morning for several days, so I apologize in advance for not being able to comment further right away.

“is its language. Smith wrote imitating King James English, playing on the long-standing association of Elizabethan English with the sacred propagated by the predominance of the King James Bible. No longer the common idiom in nineteenth-century America, the unique Elizabethan English conjured up visions of the sacred for American readers. Many of the later arguments against revising the King James Bible revealed how many Americans saw Elizabethan English as the only appropriate language in which to enfold the holy words of Scripture.

“Smith judiciously wrote his book in an idiom that constantly invoked the holy cadences of the King James Bible. While Alexander Campbell was taking the eth endings off words, Smith was putting them on. . . .”

—Paul C. Gutjahr, An American Bible: A History of the Good Book in the United States, 1777-1880 (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, [c. 1999]), 153.

Locally we’ve had harmonies of the accounts passed out in Gospel Doctrine. You can a learn a lot by comparing and contrasting.

Just like listening to a couple tell the story of how they met. Depending on the audience and what is being talked about, that story will have a lot of differences.

Or, speaking of harmonies, compare the four gospels. I’ve had people tell me that Christ didn’t exist, based on the differences between the gospels, or that the resurrection isn’t part of the original story. Wars have been fought over whether we should forgive our debtors, trespassers or others.

The focus of the First Vision is that Christ spoke to Joseph Smith, forgave him and gave him instructions. Was Christ introduced? Was there an environment and where there attendants. What were the specifics of the instructions and what did they really mean? Those are themes that get developed, or not, depending on what we discuss the First Vision for.

Much like the complete set up. Joseph had meditated and studied scripture, resolves to pray vocally (which he was not in the habit of doing) and had other predicates that moved him to have this particular prayer on this particular day, place and time.

Are we getting the Gospel according to Matthew, the Gospel according to Mark or the Gospel according to John?

Zion’s Camp more clearly established his prophetic role and voice

It is easy to forget that until after Liberty Jail, Joseph was not a strong public speaker and always had others who had the limelight, who spoke. After Liberty Jail he begins to speak for himself. There are some interesting transitions. When you read about the latter Joseph, it is easy to forget the almost illiterate farm boy who didn’t even do his own writing and could not work on the Book of Mormon without someone to write for him. Whose personal letters are rather weak.

Later he is eloquent, and the differences as his style matures are interesting, especially since his voice and the various editorial and authorial voices of the Book of Mormon never really overlap.

That also bears on his accounts of the First Vision. His early writing is weak, not detail filled, and pointed. Later he is able to better express himself.

“So, I sort of think, Joseph may have been praying for forgiveness, felt that he received forgiveness, and later embellished the story.”

Indeed, nearly every day for several weeks in the spring of 1832, Joseph Smith retired to a grove of trees in southern Indiana where he could be alone. He prayed, meditated and wept at the thought of the adversary’s influence upon him in times past. He emerged from these experiences triumphant, declaring that “. . . God is merciful and has fogiven my Sins and I rjoice that he Sendeth forth the Comferter unto as many as believe and humbleeth themselves before him . . .” (Letter to Emma Smith in Joseph’s handwriting [spelling retained], Greenville, Indiana, 6 June 1832. Original manuscript at the Chicago Historical Society, transcribed with commentary and illustrations in [The] Personal Writings of Joseph Smith. Revised Edition, Compiled and Edited by Dean C. Jessee. [Salt Lake City: Deseret Book; Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University Press, 2002], 263-68; text above quoted from p. 264.)

By November (1832), Joseph had recorded the earliest known account of his first vision. It is written in his own hand. It mentions the appearance of one being only, “the Lord of glory” who was crucified for the sins of the world and who would come again, “clothed in the glory of my Father . . .”

Couldn’t have said it better myself

Ray,

That goes for you too!

Mo’Betta,

Done.

Hawkgrrrl,

It is true that meaning 5 is somewhat ambiguous, but I find it defensible given Joseph’s assumptions about his world. Joseph probably had little to no contact with Catholics or Orthodox Christians in his boyhood, so his phrase “Which of all the churches were right” has to be seen in that light. Our questions presuppose certain answers and exclude others. Joseph assumed CHRISTIANITY was right, and probably that if any church were “right” it would be one with its origins in the Reformation. He did not ask “which of all the monotheistic or Abrahamic religions is right?” I think this point alone (Joseph’s assumptions going into the grove) is fascinating in itself. His family dynamics were pointing him in several different directions, but primarily between a form of orthodox American Protestantism and universalism.

As far as point 3, I think it is telling that Joseph continued to lean universalist until the translation of the Book of Mormon, when universalist teachings come under significant fire. However, universalism can still be seen in the book of Moroni, whose diatribe against infant baptism would be received warmly in universalist congregations.

Regarding point 4, I find it comforting that God is pragmatic!

So, I sort of think, Joseph may have been praying for forgiveness, felt that he received forgiveness, and later embellished the story.

Isn’t the “Miracle of Forgiveness” itself something significant. Maybe he should have just left it at that.

The multiple versions kind of confuses things, but forgiveness of sins is good.

Of the other 4 conclusions you list out (when considering all First Vision accounts), here are my thoughts:
1 – I agree this is important. As to the “sins” vs. “frailties,” even JS hedged a bit in describing his own sins.
2 – At least He forgives them readily when supplicated in a certain manner.
3 – Interesting. Frankly, the Universalists are not specifically refuted by what is recorded other than the command to “join none of them.” Universalists are non-creedal. I am not sure any specific Universalist ministers were implied in the “those professors were all corrupt” which is not very specific.
4 – seems pragmatic to me (vs. comforting), but whatever.

Good post. Thought provoking.

Note: I’ll have a post on this topic put together on my blog shortly to more coherently characterize some of my thoughts.

Physics really doesn’t enter this for me, since it’s quite easy to construct theoretical possibilities – even if we limit ourselves to the latest discoveries in quantum and string physics. That stuff is FASCINATING.

This is one of the most distinctive of the doctrines that arose from the First Vision.

Presumably “bodies of flesh and bone as tangible as man’s” have physical mass. If so, how fast can they travel through space, given the limits discovered by Einstein? I’m not being flippant. The laws of physics impose severe limits on the movement of matter and energy through space. This doctrine is quite problematic from a practical point of view.

(To put the problem in another way, can Elohim travel faster than the speed of light? If so, what is his mass? Again, I’m not being flippant. I’m just pointing out that the comfort and reassurance of a physical God is offset by troubling consequences of physicality.)

As to Benjamin’s theophany point… In his defense, and at the risk of putting words in his mouth (please do correct me if I’m wrong) I didn’t read him to be saying that only by virtue of a theophany could one become an apostle, but rather that a theophany by definition qualifies one as an apostle. Perhaps not an Apostle, but definitely an apostle.

And thanks for underscoring the gradual development of Joseph’s understanding of his call. “Well after.” As echoed by Ray, we often map our modern sensibilities onto past events to reinterpret them. Not that doing so is entirely inappropriate to our modern purposes at times; however, we ought to be honest about what we are doing. Yes, we as modern Latter-day Saints learn 1-7 from the First Vision. But no, the First Vision in itself does not teach 1-7. The same problem too often prevents us from learning from scripture generally when we approach the words assuming that they will reinforce our present understanding of things. But that’s another post I’ve been meaning to make on my blog, best suited for another day.

Thanks all–good thoughts.

Interesting point about theophanies and their accompanying status. So Mary saw Gabriel, not God, and is hence not an apostle, although she carried Jesus in her womb? If those claiming to be apostles have not had a theophany, are they not apostles? What about the other non-Mormon theophanies recorded in journals and newspapers?

I see where you’re coming from, but “above 500 brethren” saw the risen Lord as recorded by Paul and that’s an awfully big quorum of the 12. I tend to think these are categories we have come up with to impose order on earlier experiences. Ironically, you bring up the point that God will work outside the “system” as one of the lessons we can draw from the First Vision. That argument works until we introduce our own system. Then we can cover ourselves by saying, “But our system, unlike these earlier religious systems, is not corrupt” and the retort is, “all humans sin, including prophets, as witnessed by Joseph’s experience” and back and forth ad infinitum.

There is a side point which is that Joseph Smith was not referred to as a prophet until well after the Church was organized. Well after. I don’t think the translation of the Book of Mormon was even seen as evidence of prophethood, but as evidence of his “seership” and “translatorship”. Zion’s Camp more clearly established his prophetic role and voice, I think. Historians out there to clarify this point, please?

MattM,

How was your First Vision talk received? Have you written something similar on your blog?