Joseph Smith First Vision

Why it matters that Smith didn't write the First Vision story

Some have asked why it matters that Joseph Smith did not write the official version of the First Vision story. It's important because the church has a history of denying things because they were not written by Joseph Smith. For example, in the case of the Kinderhook Plates fraud, the church completely absolves Smith of any wrongdoing because his scribes wrote in the first-person to pretend Joseph Smith translated the plates. As far as the church is concerned, the fact that Joseph Smith's scribes wrote that he translated the plates and pretended Smith wrote it, completely discredits the claim.

In the official History of the Church, Joseph Smith is recorded as saying he translated the Kinderhook Plates, along with this description:

“May 1, 1843: I [Joseph Smith] insert facsimiles of the six brass plates found near Kinderhook, in Pike county, Illinois, on April 23, by Mr. R. Wiley and others, while excavating a large mound. They found a skeleton about six feet from the surface of the earth, which must have stood nine feet high. The plates were found on the breast of the skeleton, and were covered on both sides with ancient characters. I [Joseph Smith] have translated a portion of them, and find they contain the history of the person with whom they were found. He was a descendant of Ham, through the loins of Pharaoh, king of Egypt, and that he received his kingdom from the ruler of heaven and earth.”
- Joseph Smith, History of the Church, Vol. 5, p.372, also published as Joseph Smith's writing in Millenial Star, Vol. XXI., p. 40.

Yet despite this first-person account attributed to Joseph Smith, the church now absolves Smith of any involvement with the Kinderhook plates because this journal entry was not really written by Joseph Smith, but his faithful personal secretary William Clayton.

In the Ensign Magazine, the church explains:

"Although this [first-person] account appears to be the writing of Joseph Smith, it is actually an excerpt from a journal of William Clayton. It has been well known that the serialized “History of Joseph Smith” consists largely of items from other persons’ personal journals and other sources, collected during Joseph Smith’s lifetime and continued after the Saints were in Utah, then edited and pieced together to form a history of the Prophet’s life “in his own words.” It was not uncommon in the nineteenth century for biographers to put the narrative in the first person when compiling a biographical work, even though the subject of the biography did not actually say or write all the words attributed to him; thus the narrative would represent a faithful report of what others felt would be helpful to print. The Clayton journal excerpt was one item used in this way. For example, the words “I have translated a portion” originally read “President J. has translated a portion."

"Where the ideas written by William Clayton originated is unknown. However, as will be pointed out later, speculation about the plates and their possible content was apparently quite unrestrained in Nauvoo when the plates first appeared. In any case, this altered version of the extract from William Clayton’s journal was reprinted in the Millennial Star of 15 January 1859, and, unfortunately, was finally carried over into official Church history when the “History of Joseph Smith” was edited into book form as the History of the Church in 1909."

"That other members may have been less judicious and not guided in the same way cannot be laid at the Prophet’s feet. Many people, now as well as then, have an appetite for hearsay and a hope for “easy evidence” to bolster or even substitute for personal spirituality and hard-won faith that comes from close familiarity with truth and communion with God."
- Excerpts from Stanley B. Kimball, “Kinderhook Plates Brought to Joseph Smith Appear to Be a Nineteenth-Century Hoax,” Ensign, Aug. 1981, page 66

What the church now says about these fake Joseph Smith journal entries should be equally applied to the official First Vision story, which also pretends to be written by Joseph Smith but was written by someone else.

Here's how the official First Vision story should accurately read:

"But, exerting all his powers to call upon God to deliver him out of the power of this enemy which had seized upon him, and at the very moment when he was ready to sink into despair and abandon himself to destruction—not to an imaginary ruin, but to the power of some actual being from the unseen world, who had such marvelous power as he had never before felt in any being—just at this moment of great alarm, he saw a pillar of light exactly over his head, above the brightness of the sun, which descended gradually until it fell upon him."

"It no sooner appeared than he found himself delivered from the enemy which held him bound. When the light rested upon him he saw two Personages, whose brightness and glory defy all description, standing above him in the air. One of them spake unto him, calling him by name and said, pointing to the other—This is My Beloved Son. Hear Him!"

Reading this story in its true form reveals that it is not an eye-witness account or a personal testimony, but an embellished story written by someone else nearly twenty years after the alleged occurrence. The person who wrote it was not there, but was writing a story to "represent a faithful report of what others felt would be helpful to print" as the church describes other things falsely attributed by the Church to Joseph Smith.

If the church is willing to come clean on Smith's Kinderhook plates translation journal entries, why not the First Vision narrative?

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