It is interesting to see how Bushman flowers up the three versions of the First Vision accounts: 1832, 1835 and 1838 documentation of an the 1812 event.
However, I noted an interesting historical fact on page 41. Apparently there were somewhere between several and many people of the era that proclaimed visions. According to Bushman, this is why the various preachers wrote off Joseph Smith's vision so immediately, not for what he said he saw, but because of the common problem they had with other visionaries.
Note the similarity to the following quote from the book:
The Sayne Sentinel in 1823 reported Asa Wild's vision of Christ in Amsterdam, New York, telling him that all denominations were corrupt. At various other times and places, beginning early in the Protestant era, religious eccentrics had claimed visits from divinity. Norris Stearns published an account in 1815 of two beings who appeared to him: One was God, my Maker, almost in bodily shape like a man. His face was, as it were a flame of Fire, and his body, as it had been a Pillar and a Cloud … Below him stood Jesus Christ my Redeemer, in perfect shape like a man.
