Robert
Bowman, on pp. 223-65 (Chapter 8: “Joseph First Vision: Did it Happen?”) of his
book Jesus’ Resurrection
and Joseph’s Visions: Examining the Foundations of Christianity and Mormonism (Tampa,
Fla.: DeWard Publishing Company, 2020), like his discussion of the Book of
Mormon Witnesses, is a prime example of avoiding the best arguments from
pro-LDS sources he uses and often ignoring articles and other works that
soundly refute him (e.g., his following Wesley Walter’s article form 1967 about
there being no religious revivals consistent with Joseph Smith’s claims). For
those who wish to pursue works on the First Vision, here are some important
resources that are ignored and/or not meaningfully interacted with by Bowman
that calls into serious question many of his claims and arguments:
Religious Revivals in 1819/20
D. Michael
Quinn, Joseph
Smith's Experience of a Methodist "Camp Meeting" in 1820
Interestingly,
Quinn, notwithstanding being friends with the late Wesley Walters (whose 1967
article Bowman is reliant upon) was forced into admitting that Walters’ article
evidenced a strong level of intellectual integrity. Consider the following:
Minister-researcher Walters repeatedly
distorted the historical evidence by implying that a camp-meeting was an
inferior kind of revival, not even worth mentioning as "a spark of a
revival" in his discussion of Joseph's narrative about "religious
excitement" in 1820. For American Methodists from 1800 to 1830, a
camp-meeting was the most significant kind of religious revival. (p. 30)
. .
while writing about Mormon history, Reverend Walters demonstrated
academic and ethical lapses that I cannot ignore (nor minimize) while I closely
examine the same topics and (especially) the same sources (p. 62 n. 14)
I can only conclude that Reverend Wesley P.
Walters knowingly and intentionally misled his readers about the significance
of camp-meetings that he knew occurred on the outskirts of Palmyra in June 1818
and in June 1820 () (p. 92 n. 180 [re. Walters contradicting all the
descriptions of revivals he claimed to have read in New York's Methodist
Magazine])
Bowman is
familiar with the works of Quinn, often referencing his Early Mormonism and the Magic World View (2d ed; 1998). The only
interaction was a brief reference on p. 241 n.46 where he critiques Quinn for
treating “the crowd at the 1826 Genesee annual conference in Palmyra as typical
of camp meetings there, in order to suggest that a similar crowed would have
been present at a summer 1820 camp meeting.” I will let readers pursue Quinn’s
(admittedly, lengthy [110 pp.]) article to see if, at best, Bowman is straining
at the gnat while swallowing the camel re. the implications of Quinn’s work on
revivals.
Oliver Cowdery, the First Vision, the Angel Moroni,
and his articles in The Latter-day Saint
Messenger and Advocate
Roger
Nicholson, The
Cowdery Conundrum: Oliver’s Aborted Attempt to Describe Joseph Smith’s First
Vision in 1834 and 1835, Interpreter:
A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship 8 (2014): 27-44 (PDF)
William Smith’s Accounts of the First Vision
and the Angel Moroni
Elden J.
Watson, The William Smith Accounts of
Joseph Smith's First Vision
The two Lords of the 1832 First Vision
Account
Contra Stan
Larson, "Another Look at Joseph Smith's First Vision," Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought,
47, no. 2 (Summer 2014): 37-62, which Bowman is reliant upon, the 1832 account
does teach two lords. See, for e.g.:
Robert S.
Boylan, Psalm
110:1 and the two Lords in the 1832 First Vision Account
And the
discussion of the meaning of Joseph's "receiving the testimony from on
high" at:
Allusions to the First Vision in Early LDS Texts
(D&C 20:5-6 and the Book of Mormon)
Robert S.
Boylan, "Manifested"
in D&C 20:5-6: Further Evidence that D&C 20 Contains an Early Allusion
to the First Vision (Bowman’s article on the IRR.ORG Website focuses
more on post-1830 instances of “manifest”
and like-terms, not pre-1830. This article shows the language supports D&C
20:5-6 being a strong allusion to the First Vision)
Do the 1832 and 1838 Accounts Contradict One
Another Re. Joseph’s Knowledge of the Truthfulness (or lack thereof) of all Christian faiths?
On the issue
of Joseph and his concluding all the sects of Christianity were in error, see
the following from the FairMormon wiki:
Parallels between Joseph Smith’s First Vision
Accounts and Contemporary Conversion Narratives
It is true
that there are parallels between Joseph’s First Vision accounts and spiritual experiences
of his contemporaries. Notwithstanding, there are significant differences, too.
In a scholarly article addressing this issue, one that finds many parallels,
wrote the following about some of these significant differences:
Of course, as historians have pointed out,
about the time that Joseph Smith was participating in revivals, Methodism
underwent a significant shift in its attitudes towards enthusiastic religion
and acceptance of dreams and visions. In fact, historian Jon Butler pinpointed
1820—the very year Smith reported having his first vision—as a turning point.
“Methodists’ distinctive and popular syncretism faded after 1820,” he
explained. (Jon Butler, Awash in a Sea of Faith: Christianizing the American
People (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1990), 241) Picking up on
this point, historian Stephen Fleming recently noted that “the rejection of
Smith’s vision by the Methodist preacher . . . suggests that those looking for
the kind of supernaturalism Smith sought, and which had been accepted on the
edges of Methodism decades earlier, would now have to look elsewhere.”(Stephen
Fleming, “The Religious Heritage of the British Northwest and the Rise of
Mormonism,” Church History 77 (March 2008): 81–82.)
This point is further demonstrated in the
language Smith used which contrasts with that found in other Methodist
conversion narratives written around the same time. Methodists of the day
carefully qualified the nature of their visionary experiences with phrases like
“by faith, I saw . . .” or by affirming that it was just a dream. Benjamin
Abbott and Philip Gatch thus each qualified their visions by noting that it was
“by faith” that they saw Jesus Christ (and in Gatch’s case, God the Father).
Dan Young likewise saw and conversed with Christ but was careful to explain
that it was not a literal vision but rather “a very singular dream” while he
slept. (Young, Autobiography of Dan Young, 28–29.) Most commonly, individuals described
their visions in ambiguous terms. Henry Boehm, for example, described that he
“had a view of the atonement of the Son of God,” and “by faith, I realized my
interest in it,” while Ezekiel Cooper expressed his conversion in equally vague
terms: “I had an opening to my mind of the infinite fullness of Christ, and of
the willingness of the Father, through his Son, to receive me into his favor.”
(Wakeley, The Patriarch of One Hundred Years, 17; Cooper, Beams of Light, 18)
Joseph Smith, by contrast, affirmed
unambiguously that “it was nevertheless a fact, that I had had a vision. . . .
I had actually seen a light and in the midst of that light I saw two
personages, and they did in reality speak to me. . . . I knew it, and I knew
that God knew it, and I could not deny it.”(Smith, “History—1839,” in Jessee,
The Papers of Joseph Smith, 1:274. Compare Smith’s language with that of Dan
Young, Autobiography of Dan Young, 28–29, who affirmed that his vision of
Christ was “a very singular dream,” but nothing more. Susan Juster, Doomsayers:
Anglo-American Prophecy in the Age of Revolution (Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 2006), 115–16, notes that “Evangelicals were very careful
in the language they used to describe their visionary experiences, always
conscious of the porous line separating faith from superstition. They used
words like ‘seemingly’ and ‘by faith’ to signal their awareness of the enormous
channels of truth and knowledge. . . . In general, visions should be seen—not
felt or heard in any physical way—and seen by the ‘eye of faith’ alone.”) It
was thus not necessarily a matter of what Joseph Smith experienced, but rather
how he explained it. The straightforward and sure language he used to describe
his vision filtered its meaning, making it more threatening to the Methodist
minister in whom he confided. (Christopher C. Jones, "The Power and Form
of Godliness: Methodist Conversation Narratives and Joseph Smith's First
Vision," Journal
of Mormon History Vol. 37, No. 2 [Spring 2011]:88-114,
here, pp. 112-14; this article is referenced by Bowman on pp. 228-29 n. 14)
A great book
on the topic would be Trevan G. Hatch, When
the Lights Came On: Joseph Smith and the Return of Heavenly Manifestations
(an earlier edition was published under the title, Visions
Manifestations and Miracles of the Restoration), one which openly
discusses the (albeit, rare) instances of those who claimed to have seen the Father
in visions/visionary experiences).
To be fair
to Bowman, he does criticise some over-enthusiastic critics of the Church in
engaging in some parallelomania on this point:
We should avoid extreme claims or
question-begging assertions with regard to the relationship between Joseph’s
visionary accounts and those of earlier visionaries. On the one hand, some
critics of the First Vision have alleged that Joseph plagiarized his story from
one or more of those earlier accounts (See, for example, “First Vision
Plagiarized,” at MormonHandbook.com). (Bowman, Jesus’ Resurrection and Joseph’s Visions, 233)
General Apologetic Works on the First Vision
For those
who want a meaningful introduction to the issues relating to the First Vision (not
the hack job one will find in Bowman’s chapter), two good places to start would
be:
Pearl of
Great Price Central (part of Book
of Mormon Central), Joseph
Smith-History Insights
FairMormon, Joseph
Smith’s First Vision
