sock puppet wrote:asbestosman wrote:From what I recall of earlier versions (appearing in the Ensign and which I read at BYU), I take them as fact too. I just happen to believe the JSH version contains the most important details. Also, I believe the JSH version has had a bit more scrutiny for clarity--at least on the most important details.sock puppet wrote:...but for the record, you lost some points on my esteem meter over this one.
It would be helpful to me if you articulated why. If you see something here I don't, then there's a blind spot because not only do I not see anything wrong with it myself, I cannot figure out why a critic would find much at fault with it.
Probably because uncharacteristically for you, asbestosman, here you seemed to say you (a) accept the 'whole enchilada' without any scrutiny or explanation, and (b) accept the canonized, 1838 version as having the 'most important details', with no explanation of what is included therein and what is left out of it.
I understand that concerning, from Wesley Walters' piece, Joseph Smith's First Vision: Fact or Fiction?, the first vision--
- There is no record of revivals in 1820 in or near Palmyra of "great multitudes" joined the Methodist, Baptist and Presbyterian churches--The Presbyterian records for the Palmyra Presbyterian Church show that it experienced no revival in 1820. (See Geneva Presbytery "Records," Presbyterian Historical Society.) The local Baptist church gained only six on profession of faith the entire year ("Records for the First Baptist Church in Palmyra," American Baptist Historical Society) while the Methodists actually lost members that year as well as the preceding and following years (Minutes of the Annual Conference).
- JSJr claimed that his mother, sister and two brothers were led to join the local Presbyterian Church as a result of that 1820 revival. However, that seems to have occurred 3 years later, in 1823 (LDS Messenger & Advocate I, pp. 42, 78), which also explained it was an angel in his bedroom, not elohim or jehovah in a grove. Lucy Mack Smith's unpublished account traces the origin of Mormonism to a bedroom visit by an angel. (First draft of "Lucy Smith's History," LDS Church Archives).
- Lucy also explained the revival and her joining the church following the death of her son, Alvin, who died Nov. 19, 1823 (p. 55-56).
- Newspaper accounts explain a revival occurred in 1824-25, with The Baptist church receiving 94 new converts, the Presbyterian 99, the Methodist 208. "Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought" Spring 1969, pp. 59-100.
- The difference between an occurrence when you are 14 years of age and 17 (or older) is significant. Think of what was happening in your hometown when you were 14 versus 19. Do you really conflate the two in your own recollections of your past?
- In the 1832 version, JSJr came to the key conclusion about the existing denominations from reading the scriptures rather than at the time of being told by elohim or jehovah "it had never entered into my heart that all were wrong": "By searching the Scriptures I found that mankind did not come unto the Lord but that they had apostatized from the true and living faith and there was no society or denomination that built upon the Gospel of Jesus Christ as recorded in the new testament." See the text in BYU Studies, Spring 1969, pp. 278ff.
- In the 1832 version, JSJr mentions only jehovah, but by 1838 elohim was added to the tale.
- Not such a trivial point since David O. McKay declared that "the appearing of the Father and the Son to Joseph Smith is the foundation of the Church." (Gospel Ideals, p. 85).
- In the 1838 version, after there had been some actual persecution of JSJr, he added that following the first vision, he was persecuted by the Palmyra area churches for telling of the first vision. However, Orsemus Turner, in the same juvenile debating club with JSJr, recalled that "after catching a spark of Methodism [JSJr] became a very passable exhorter in evening meetings" (History of the Pioneer Settlement of Phelps and Gorham's Purchase, 1851, p. 214).
- Even Brigham Young undertsood it was an angel sent to JSJr to tell him all other religions were wrong, not elohim, not jehovah "The Lord did not come with the armies of heaven...But He did send His angel to this same obscure person, Joseph Smith jun...and informed him that he should not join any of the religions of the day, for they were all wrong;..." (Journal of Discourses 2:171).
- The 1832 version failed to mention an evil power having overcome JSJr before the divine appearance, but by 1835 tellings and in the 1838 one, it was part of the story.
So is it, like McKay said, the foundation of the LDS Church that elohim and jehovah appeared, or that one of them simply sent an emissary angel? Do you not find it at all disturbing that the concept of the 1830 god in the Book of Mormon more reflects a singular god or trinity concept, and JSJr claimed in 1832 that only one of them appeared to him, but by 1838 when JSJr had better developed his concept of three distinct beings united in purpose for a godhead, then lo and behold he remembers it was two distinct personages that appeared to him in the grove?
Is is also insignificant whether JSJr, who founded a new church, determined on his own from scripture study that all of the existing ones were false, as opposed to elohim or jehovah telling him that?
I suppose that I found your glossing over these problems, to pronounce the facts of all the accounts to be true when some directly conflict, and that without explanation the salient points are found in the 1838 version, the one JSJr developed years after the first tellings of the tale and stuck with would be the one.
I read your post and thought of two memorable phrases....
"some things that are true are very embarrassing to the Church"
"don't worry about those little flecks of history that show us to be a fraud"
I may not have remembered them word for word but I captured the sentiment in both.
