The Nehor wrote:[...]
I think it might be good to note that Joseph was reluctant to discuss the First Vision a lot. When the missionaries first went forth the story began with Moroni. Joseph must have told some friends because the First Vision details were out earlier but in many cases they melded into the Moroni Story and the two were endlessly muddled. The publication of the account in the Pearl of Great Price was specifically to clear up all the confusion around the two events. Of the writings and words of Joseph Smith that I have read I can't recall him discoursing on the First Vision. I don't think he liked to discuss it openly.
It's interesting you bring this up. Terryl Givens (my infallible man-crush) had this to say on the FV (emphasis mine):
From “By the Hand of Mormon: The American Scripture that Launched a New World Religion,” 2003 Paperback Edition (New York: Oxford University Press), pages 9-10
Like many seekers of the Second Awakening, the young Smith found himself caught up in a scene of fervid revivalism and confused by the competing claims of ministers seeking converts. Deciding to pray for heavenly guidance, Smith had retired to the woods to ask God which church he should join. On that early spring morning in 1820, two personages, identifying themselves as God the Father and Jesus Christ, had appeared to the boy in a grove of trees on his father’s homestead (2). Though it may be true, as Mormon historian Richard Bushman writes, that in seeking such guidance “an answer for himself must be an answer for the entire world” and that with the vision “a new era in history began,” the boy’s initial reading was clearly less grandiose (3). His personal quest for spiritual guidance may have precipitated an epiphany on the order of Paul’s on the road to Damascus, but the important truths he learned were that his personal sins were forgiven and that he should hold himself aloof from the sects of his day. Although the timing and the naming of the event assign it absolute primacy in the founding of Mormonism, the vision was described by the young Joseph and apparently interpreted by him at the time as a private experience with no greater implications for the world at large or for Christian believers generally. In returning from the divine visitation, his understated remark, to his mother was simply, “I have learned for myself that Presbyterianism is not true.” (4)
In fact, so far was Smith at this point from universalizing his private revelation that his own mother continued her affiliation with the Presbyterian church for another several years. Apparently Smith did share his experience with at least a few persons outside the family circle, for he later said that he was chastised by the clergy and ridiculed by neighbors for his claims (5). It was not until 1832 that he actually recorded the event, and he withheld publishing a version until 1842, just two years before his death (6). Accordingly, neither Smith nor Mormon missionaries made much mention of the vision in the early years of Mormonism (7). Even in the 1830 “Revelation on Church Organization and Government,” a kind of manifesto that heralded the church’s formal founding, the vision received no more than a passing, cryptic allusion to a time when “it was truly manifested unto this first elder [Joseph Smith] that he had received a remission of his sins.” (8 ) Clearly, the experience was understood at the time, and even scripturally portrayed, as part of a personal conversion narrative, not the opening scene in a new gospel dispensation.
Endnotes:
(2). Between 1832 and 1842, Joseph would write or dictate several accounts of this vision. In the first, he mentions only on personage. See Dean C. Jessee, ed., The Papers of Joseph Smith, vol. 1, Autobiographical and Historical Writings (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1989), for those versions as well as some contemporary secondhand accounts.
(3). Richard L. Bushman’s account of early Mormonism is the best to date. See his Joseph Smith and the Beginnings of Mormonism (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1984), 55,57
(4). Joseph Smith, Jr., History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 7 vols., ed. James Mulholland, Robert B. Thompson, William W. Phelps, Willard Richards, George A. Smith, and later B.H. Roberts (Salt Lake City: Deseret News Press, 1902-12; 2nd rev. ed., Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1951), 1:6. Bushman observes that the confusion of the prophet’s mother, Lucy Mack Smith, over the details of Joseph’s first vision seems to confirm that he shared few particulars of his experience even with close family. As Bushman notes, “even twelve years after the event the First Vision’s personal significance for him still overshadowed its place in the divine plan.” (Bushman, Joseph Smith, 56).
(5). Disapproval by “one of the Methodist preachers” – probably George Lane – is the only specific instance he provides of the “severe persecution at the hands of all classes of men, both religious and irreligious” referred to in his personal history (JS-H 1:21-27).
(6). Two years before the publication of Joseph’s official version in 1842, his friend Orson Pratt had published an account related to him by the prophet. See An Interesting Account of Several Remarkable Visions and of the Late Discovery of Ancient American Records (Edinburgh: Ballyntyne and Hughes, 1840). For a study of the different accounts of the First Vision, see Milton V. Backman Jr., Joseph Smith’s First Vision (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1980).
(7) See James B. Allen, “The Significance of Joseph Smith’s ‘First Vision’ in Mormon Thought,” Dialogue 1 (autumn 1966): 29-45; Marvin Hill, “On the First Vision and Its Importance in the Shaping of Early Mormonism,” Dialogue 12 (spring 1979): 90-99; James B. Allen, “The Emergence of a Fundamental: The Expanding Role of Joseph Smith’s First Vision in Mormon Thought,” Journal of Mormon History 7 (1980): 43-61.
(8 ). Doctrine and Covenants (D&C) 20:5. In 1833, a compilation of revelations received by Joseph Smith was published as the Book of Commandments. In 1835, the volume was expanded and republished as the Doctrine and Covenants. This volume, along with the Bible, the Book of Mormon, and the Pearl of Great Price, is one of the “standard works” considered scripture by Latter-day Saints.
PS
Here's the McConkie dilly I was thinking of: http://www.lightplanet.com/Mormons/dail ... ie_how.htm