Commenting on the differences between the various accounts of the First Vision, one non-LDS scholar commented as follows:
Critics of Mormonism have delighted in the discrepancies between this canonical account [the 1838 account of the First Vision as found in the Pearl of Great Price] and earlier renditions, especially one written in Smith's own hand in 1832. For example, in the 1832 version, Jesus appears to Smith alone, and does all the talking himself. Such complaints, however, are much ado about relatively nothing. Any good lawyer (or historian) would expect to find contradictions in competing narratives written down years apart and decades after the event. And despite the contradictions, key elements abide. In each case, Jesus appears to Smith in a vision. In each case, Smith is blessed with a revelation. In each case, God tells him to remain all of from all Christian denominations, as something better is in store. (Stephen Prothero, American Jesus: How the Son of God Became a National Icon [New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003], 171, comment in square brackets added for clarification)
While the author is wrong about the 1832 account speaking of Jesus alone appearing to Joseph Smith (see below), he is correct in noting that anti-Mormon critics overstate the potency of the differences in the accounts provided by Joseph Smith of his First Vision against its historicity.
On the claim that the 1832 account speaks of only Jesus appearing to Joseph Smith, be sure to check out my article Psalm 110:1 and the two Lords in the 1832 First Vision Account (cf. The 1832 First Vision Account versus Modalism). Also, one should also pursue the Gospel Topics essay on the First Vision which also links to the different accounts thereof:
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