The 1832 History is a curious thing, with all the drama surrounding it... and not only in the time of Joseph Smith, but during the mid 20th century too. The history was written in a blank notebook purchased for that purpose, but Smith and FG Williams abandoned the project after recording half a dozen pages... They then flipped the book over and used it as a letterbook where they made copies of letters. So someone ripped out the History pages... but there was more ripped out of that book that we know nothing about! When they flipped the book over, there was eight pages of text written down, (prior to the letters copied into the book) but they are gone. Eight pages of something that someone felt they had to cut out of the book. And there was a title page for the History that was torn out. (Probably by Smith).
So... it is not only the History that was ripped out of the book, something longer than that was also ripped out of it. Where might that be, do you think? And... what was it? The JSPapers write,
Also, the initial three leaves containing the history were excised from the volume. The eight inscribed leaves in the back of the volume may have been cut out at the same time. Manuscript evidence suggests that these excisions took place in the mid-twentieth century.
But according to FAIRMORMON, no one knows who ripped out the pages. They quote from the JSP who artfully don't mention much about the incident, only when it probably occurred. But there is someone who does clue us into the whole story behind this, (which is fascinating) and that's the very fine historian Stan Larson here (
https://cesletter.org/pdf/first-vision.pdf)
He writes,
This text of the Prophet’s narration in the Papers volume is prefaced with a carefully detailed “Source Note,” which explains why this excerpt is so unfamiliar to the general members of the Church. The note provides the following information. The 1832 history was written on both sides of the frst three leaves of a new ledger book. The fourth leaf began with a new numbering system and the ledger book became a copybook for Joseph Smith’s outgoing letters, as well as copies of Oliver Cowdery’s 1829 letters. This volume was listed in an inventory made in Nauvoo, came across the plains to Utah, and ended up in the LDS Church archives—with impeccable “continuous institutional custody.” However, this six-page history was at some point excised from the letterbook. Fortuitously, one can actually date the time period when these leaves were removed, because the tearing of the last of the three leaves was done with such little care that a small triangular fragment (containing four words of the text) was initially left in the gutter of the letterbook and then removed and taped back onto the last leaf. The clear cellophane tape that was used for this repair was not invented until 1930, which supplies a terminus a quo. Furthermore, “the cut and tear marks, as well as the inscriptions in the gutters of the three excised leaves, match those of the remaining leaf stubs, confrming their original location” in the Joseph Smith letterbook. By 1965 these three leaves of the 1832 account were again “archived together with the letterbook.”4
Thus, the period when these three leaves were separated was approximately 1930 to 1965—or allowing a five-year period for the cellophane tape to come into common usage in America, the three decades from 1935 to 1965. ...
However, what is completely omitted from both the “Source Note” and the “Historical Introduction” is any discussion as to why the three leaves were cut out and who it was that cut this history out of the letterbook. Although the editors of the Histories volume of the Joseph Smith Papers do not discuss why the 1832 history was excised, we can speculate about who might have removed the leaves, and why. Because we know that the missing pages were kept in the office safe of Joseph Fielding Smith, it is unlikely that the leaves were removed simply in accordance with the archival practice of separating collections based on content. We can also surmise that one of the senior members of the Church Historian’s Office would have been responsible for the decision to keep the pages separate; it was probably Joseph Fielding Smith himself, but could possibly have been Earl E. Olson or A. William Lund.7
There are no available records of the reasoning behind the decision to keep the 1832 account from becoming widely known, but the history of denying researchers access to the account suggests some uneasiness about its contents. Some time during the 1940s or early 1950s, Joseph Fielding Smith8 showed Levi Edgar Young (who was then the senior president of the First Council of the Seventy) this 1832 account of the First Vision. LaMar Petersen, an organist and music teacher by profession but an amateur Mormon historian by avocation, had a meeting with Young on February 3, 1953, and took the following notes:
A list of 5 questions was presented. Bro. Young indicated some surprise at the nature of the questions but said he heartily approved of them being asked. Sa[i]d they were important, fundamental, were being asked more by members of the Church, and should be asked. Said the Church should have a committee available where answers to such questions could be obtained. He has quit going down with his own questions to Brother Joseph Fielding (Smith) because he was laughed at and put off. His curiosity was excited when reading in Roberts’ Doc. History reference to “documents from which these writings were compiled.” Asked to see them. TOLD TO GET HIGHER PERMISSION. Obtained that permission. Examined documents. Written, he thought, about 1837 or 1838. Was told NOT TO COPY OR TELL WHAT THEY CONTAINED. Said it was a “STRANGE” account of the First Vision. Was put back in vault. REMAINS UNUSED, UNKNOWN.9
Thirty-four years later, Petersen wrote his memories of this same episode:
The most noteworthy [meetings with LDS General Authorities] were six sessions in which my wife and I spent with Levi Edgar Young in 1952. He was forthright in discussing Mormon problems in history and theology, but always in loyal church terms. He told us that he had been defended before the First Presidency by his “buffers”—Apostles [Joseph F.] Merrill, [Charles A.] Callis, and [John A.] Widtsoe. He told us of a “strange account” (Young’s own term) of the First Vision, which he thought was written in Joseph’s own hand and which had been concealed for 120 years in a locked vault. He declined to tell us details, but stated that it did not agree entirely with the offcial version. Jesus was the center of the vision, but God was not mentioned. I respected Young’s wish that the information be withheld until after his death.10
Even though Levi Edgar Young told LaMar Petersen that he had read the “strange account” of the First Vision, he had been instructed “not to copy or tell what they contained,” and accordingly did not divulge the contents to anyone. However, while not providing any detailed information about this “strange account” of the First Vision, Young did disclose that it described a vision of only Jesus, without any mention of God. Petersen kept this information confidential until Young’s death in December 1963.
In early 1964, Petersen told Jerald and Sandra Tanner about this “strange account” of the First Vision. They wrote to Joseph Fielding Smith, asking for an opportunity to see this early account.
Joseph Fielding Smith did not know exactly what Levi Edgar Young had told LaMar Petersen, and he refused to let the Tanners see the 1832 history. However, about this same time Joseph Fielding Smith relinquished the three leaves of the excised 1832 history from his private custody within his office safe and transferred it back to the regular Church Historian’s collection. Then he authorized Earl E. Olson, his Assistant Church Historian, to show the newly available leaves to Paul R. Cheesman, a BYU graduate student working on his thesis. Cheesman explained that Olson demonstrated how the pages “matched with [the] edge of the journal to prove location” in the Joseph Smith letterbook.11
As the result of this assistance, Cheesman prepared a typescript in his 1965 BYU master’s thesis on Joseph Smith’s visions.12 Later that same year Jerald Tanner and Sandra Tanner were the first to publish the text of the 1832 account, using Cheesman’s imperfect transcript. Four years later Dean C. Jessee published his important article in Brigham Young University Studies, with an accurate transcript of the text.13 ...
When I examined the Joseph Smith Papers Project volume containing the 1832 account, I was impressed by the care and detail of the preparation of the “Historical Introduction,” “Source Note,” and footnotes, but I was shocked by the absence of discussion of the problems introduced by the account with respect to the number of persons who appeared to Joseph, and the historical efforts to avoid those problems by suppressing the 1832 version. I talked on the phone to each of the editors, but none was willing to comment on why the leaves were excised from the 1830s ledger. Consequently, I felt the need to write this article. I was born a Mormon and I will die a Mormon. I was taught and believed—and still believe—that we should not be afraid of the truth, and always keep searching for the truth. Since the 1832 version is not only the earliest, but also the only one actually written by Joseph Smith, I regard it as the most reliable.
RELEVANT NOTES
8. When Joseph Fielding Smith became president of the LDS Church in 1970, the personal safe in his office was moved into the First Presidency’s walk-in vault. The exact time that the 1832 account was put into the Joseph Fielding Smith office safe and the date that he showed the history to Levi Edgar Young would probably be found in the Joseph Fielding Smith Collection, catalogued as Ms 4250 at the Church History Library Archives. On December 11, 2012 the writer sent to Richard E. Turley a written request for permission to read the diaries (either photocopies or microflm) of Joseph Fielding Smith from 1930 to 1954, but this request was denied.
9. Jerald Tanner and Sandra Tanner, Joseph Smith’s Strange Account of the First Vision; Also a Critical Study of the First Vision (Salt Lake City: Modern Microflm Co., [1965]), 4, with the quotation being based on notes made by Petersen of the interview with Levi Edgar Young. Emphasis is in the original, but that emphasis is probably due to the Tanners, who added the full caps and underlining. Levi Edgar Young was wrong about the date of the “Strange” account of the First Vision, since we now know that it was written in 1832, not 1837 or 1838.
10. LaMar Petersen, The Creation of the Book of Mormon: A Historical Inquiry (Salt Lake City: Freethinker Press, 2000), xii. Petersen gave the year as 1952, instead of February 3, 1953. Since he had six separate sessions with Levi Edgar Young, these meetings could have covered late 1952 as well as early 1953. The other option is that the 1952 date is an error in the memory of the nonagenarian Petersen.
11. Paul R. Cheesman, “An Analysis of the Accounts Relating Joseph Smith’s Early Visions” (unpublished M.A. thesis, Brigham Young University, 1965), 126. Cheesman thought that this six-page account was written about 1833. In a telephone conversation with the writer on December 15, 2012, his widow, Millie Foster Cheesman, stated that in contrast to the complete
restriction placed on Fawn M. Brodie (a niece of President David O. McKay), Cheesman was given full access, allowing him to transcribe the 1832 account of the First Vision.
12. Two decades later Cheesman published his thesis as a hardback book, The Keystone of Mormonism: Early Visions of the Prophet Joseph Smith (Provo: Eagle Systems International, 1988).
13. Dean C. Jessee, “The Early Accounts of Joseph Smith’s First Vision,” Brigham Young University Studies 9 (Spring 1969): 275–94.
In the FAIRMORMON apologetic concerning this episode, they write,
It is not known who removed the pages from the book or why, nor is it known when or why they were restored to the book
Yeah, right. They then quote the Tanners, (from Shadow or Reality)...
Here is the reference to the document by Jerald and Sandra Tanner, as published in their book Mormonism: Shadow or Reality?:
"Strange" Accounts
For years the Mormon leaders publicly maintained that Joseph Smith told only one story concerning the First Vision. Preston Nibley declared: "Joseph Smith lived a little more than twenty-four years after this first vision. During this time he told but one story--..." (Joseph Smith the Prophet, 1944, page 30)
At the very time that Preston Nibley made this statement the Mormon leaders were suppressing at least two accounts of the First Vision which were written prior to the account which Joseph Smith published in the Times and Seasons. Levi Edgar Young, who was the head of the Seven Presidents of Seventies in the Mormon Church, told LaMar Petersen that he had examined a "strange" account of the First Vision and was told not to reveal what it contained. The following is from notes by LaMar Petersen of an interview with Levi Edgar Young which was held on Feb.3, 1953:
"A list of 5 questions was presented. Bro. Young indicated some surprise at the nature of the questions but said he heartily approved of them being asked. Said they were important, fundamental, were being asked more by members of the Church, and should be asked. Said the Church should have a committee available where answers to such questions could be obtained. He has quit going down with his own questions to Brother Joseph Fielding (Smith) because he was laughed at and put off.
"His curiosity was excited when reading in Roberts' Doc. History reference to 'documents from which these writings were compiled.' Asked to see them. Told to get higher permission. Obtained that permission. Examined the documents. Written, he thought, about 1837 or 1838. Was told not to copy or tell what they contained. Said it was a 'strange' account of the First Vision. Was put back in vault. Remains unused, unknown." [2]
Response to the critical perspective
The statement by the Tanners that there was only one account ever told by the Prophet is certainly incorrect; the first publication of the First Vision was not the account which ultimately became canonized in the Pearl of Great Price. Rather, the Wentworth account was the first, and it differs from the canonized account. It was published March 1, 1842, and was published frequently throughout the 19th and 20th century, and into the 21st. There was never any attempt by the Church or its leaders to suppress that version.
Blabbedy Blah, Blah...
https://www.fairmormon.org/answers/Ques ... is_safe%3F
Do you see what they did there to try and smear the Tanners? They wrote that the Tanners claimed there was only one ACCOUNT ever told by Smith, but that's not what they said. They said that Mormon leaders "for years" were claiming that there was only one STORY that was told by Smith... and that is exactly what was going on. The Tanners didn't make any claims about what versions were published and when. This whole smear by those at UNFAIRMORMON is simply ridiculous. And that is all they've got.
But let's go over what happened. We know that the pages were excised when Fielding Smith, Jr. was Church Historian. We know that he indeed did keep the account locked in his safe. We also know that he suppressed it, because those he did show it to, were sworn to secrecy BY HIM.
It could only have been one of those three that cut the account from the letterbook, and really, do you think that some assistant historian is really going to do that on their own? I rather doubt it, and even if they did, Smith KEPT IT LOCKED UP IN HIS SAFE FOR YEARS! So he was complicit, he condoned it and he kept it secret. He might as well have done it himself if he didn't actually do it.
We have this from Levi Edgar Young:
He has quit going down with his own questions to Brother Joseph Fielding (Smith) because he was laughed at and put off.
Fielding Smith Jr. kept it locked up for years. Fielding Smith Jr. laughed and put off people who had questions about it. Fielding Smith Jr. swore people to secrecy he showed it to. Fielding Smith Jr. suppressed it.
Who cut the pages from the letterbook? C'mon, we all know it was Joseph Fielding Smith, Jr.
WHERE ARE THE EIGHT MISSING PAGES THAT HE ALSO CUT OUT OF THE LETTERBOOK?
