Why Multiple Accounts of the First Vision

I am listening to episode 5 of "The First Vision: A Joseph Smith Papers Podcast. Eight minutes in, a professor Steven C. Harper of BYU talks about the nature of memory and why there were different accounts of Joseph Smith's first vision. 

8:23 - 12:45 question "Why are there different accounts?"

Following is a selection of the transcription of “It Caused Me Serious Reflection” (The First Vision Podcast, Episode 5) from 8:25 - 12:45 in the audio that answers the question "Why are there different accounts?"

The four gospels of the new testament.

The way memory works. A present production of the shards of the past. 

We view the past through the lens of the present. 

From the transcription: 

Spencer: All this talk of record keeping brings us to a question that many Latter-day Saints have asked about Joseph Smith’s first vision. Why are there different accounts?

The answer: there are different accounts of the First Vision because Joseph Smith described the event to different audiences at different times. Naturally, the different accounts vary in emphasis and detail because each was told in a different context. Nevertheless, the various accounts tell a consistent story.

Now, historians expect differences in the accounts of historical events if they were created at different times and under different circumstances. In fact, such differences in detail and emphasis often help historians and other scholars piece together a fuller story.

For instance, think of the accounts of Jesus’s life and His resurrection in the Bible—the four gospels. There are four different accounts told in different contexts that emphasize different details. Scholars of the Bible and early Christianity do not reject the accounts because of the differences but instead understand the different accounts as a benefit to their scholarship.

So, the different accounts of the First Vision can be studied in a similar way. And they not only help us better understand the vision itself. The different accounts help us better understand Joseph Smith’s life and the early history of the church he led. As Steven Harper explains, this has a lot to do with the way that memory works, that in addition to Joseph relating the vision at different times to different audiences, the various accounts are also formed by the nature of memory itself.

Steve: So, the answer to why these different accounts to me lies in the science and the psychology of memory. Memory is not what we often assume it is. Memory is not a recording of our past that’s like this podcast recording. We could replay it ten years from now, and it’ll sound the same. It’ll be the exact same recording, no matter how many times you play it or how distant in time we play it. That is not how memories work, not at all.

A memory is a present production that is made from a combination of cues that are stored somewhere in our minds somehow. Nobody knows for sure how, but “traces” of the past, as Daniel Schacter at Harvard calls them. “Traces” is his word.

So, it’s the past or pieces of the past—you might think about it as shards of the past—and present. The present environment in which we are remembering has a lot to do with the shape that memory will take.

Spencer: What Steve is describing is really interesting to me. As I understand it, what is happening in the present influences the way we remember events in the past. Our circumstances in a given moment also influence what aspects of those events we choose to emphasize. When we are talking about memory, context matters. And it matters a lot.

In other words, we view the past through the lens of the present. That’s how our memories work.

So, how does this influence the way that Joseph Smith remembered and retold the First Vision at different times?

Steve: So, what is happening in Joseph’s present to cue the memory in the first place, and then help him recover some of the shards or traces he has at his disposal, and put them together in the particular way he does at the time—that’s the way to get at the differences in the accounts.

Spencer: If we want to understand the differences in the accounts of the First Vision and uncover new and deeper meaning from Joseph Smith’s experiences, then we need to ask what was happening in Joseph Smith’s life at the moments in which he recounted the First Vision. In short, to move beyond the question of why there are different accounts of the First Vision to the question of what insights can we gain from studying the different accounts, we need to look at what cues informed the way Joseph remembered and told audiences about the event.

A link to the other episodes of "The First Vision: A Joseph Smith Papers Podcast"