Sandra
Tanner, writing in 1960, admitted that some of her earlier criticisms against the
First Vision were incorrect. I will note that, if Hugh Nibley or any other
scholar or apologist or church leader were to admit something similar on a
topic, Sandra would have written at least a booklet and/or dedicate a few
paragraphs in Mormonism: Shadow or
Reality? to such as “evidence” of the ever-changing nature of “Mormonism”
and the unreliability of LDS authors:
Some time ago, I wrote a letter stating my
reasons for withdrawing from the church. In it I stated that there was no
Mormon or anti-Mormon literature published before 1870 which identified the
personages in the first vision as God the Father and His Son, Jesus Christ. I
would like to apologize, for I have found that an anti-Mormon writer named John
Hyde, in his book ‘Mormonism,’ published in1857, states that Joseph Smith saw
God and Christ in 1820.” (Sandra Tanner to Dear Friend, [July or August 1960],
in Scott Harry Faulring, “An Oral History of the Modern Microfilm Company,”
1983, MC 1580, box 3, folder 3, LTPSC, BYU, as cited by Steven C. Harper, First Vision: Memory and Mormon Origins [New
York: Oxford University Press, 2019], 207 n. 14).
