Prophets versus Experts - Isaiah 29:10-14; JS-H 1:64-65

 

"PHD." Abbreviations.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2025. Web. 19 Jan. 2025.<https://www.abbreviations.com/term/387815>.

"For the Lord hath poured out upon you the spirit of deep sleep, and hath closed your eyes: the prophets and your rulers, the seers hath he covered. And the vision of all is become unto you as the words of a book that is sealed, which men deliver to one that is learned, saying, Read this, I pray thee: and he saith, I cannot; for it is sealed: And the book is delivered to him that is not learned, saying, Read this, I pray thee: and he saith, I am not learned. Wherefore the Lord said, Forasmuch as this people draw near me with their mouth, and with their lips do honour me, but have removed their heart far from me, and their fear toward me is taught by the precept of men: Therefore, behold, I will proceed to do a marvellous work among this people, even a marvellous work and a wonder: for the wisdom of their wise men shall perish, and the understanding of their prudent men shall be hid." (Isaiah 29:10-14)

 1. Outside of Restored Christianity, the above Isaiah quote generates generic commentary about the choice of attitude each of us have in listening to God. In parallel with Jesus's mockery of Pharisees as "whited walls" who profess a great understanding of the law, but who comprehend its fundamentals so little that they can't even recognize the Messiah right in front of their eyes, Protestant thought teaches that book learning doesn't guarantee spiritual wisdom--that you can have credentials and amass readings, and still miss the point. Both the unlearned illiterate and the learned readers get no benefit from the contents of a sealed book. While that's a fair reading of the passage's general content, two things are true: a. few "experts" feel personally implicated by passages like this even though we all should; b. new information initiates interpreters to new hermeneutic possibilities.

Self-satisfied that they would never be guilty of the errors of the Pharisees, many well-meaning Bible believers and Doctors of Divinity fail to note that their careful sola scriptura strictures put them afoul of the very root of Christ's critique--the Pharisees also claimed that only prior scripture should be trusted as the source of God's voice. Their approach to truth was as sophic as the bulk of Protestantism today--Catholicism too, with the exception of the Pope, one could argue. And in all three cases, as extensive compilation of commentary gradually substitutes for scripture itself over time, the mantic spirit Christ Himself embodied and inspired across the centuries of His manifestations to prophets is lost to erroneous argumentation. Please understand: I mean no insult to honest seekers of truth whose consistent philosophies limit their understanding. I only point out that it's possible to be internally consistent and well-meaning, and God-fearing, and honest, and still wrong.

This passage from Isaiah has a more concrete reference to a sealed book and a learned man being unable to read it--not out of over-education, but out of self-interest in not being able to control the profits from it. And the man without proper letters, the very concrete Joseph Smith, may not have had the formal training, but did have the gift and power given by God to read the book that was sealed to others. Isaiah didn't explicitly tie the unlearned man as the agent of producing the marvelous work, but he didn't forbid it either, and his move to describe the kind of work that would be wondrous and bring hearts back into alignment with the Lord in contrast with the lips that merely profess, but don't honor as one that only the unlearned could do (the wisdom of the wise men being insufficient to this task).

The Martin Harris account, published in this canonized history after he had left the church, but which he continued to attest despite incentives to recant, tells of a hand-copied page of "Reformed Egyptian" symbols which a reputable professor at Columbia verbally certified, but who likely had no clue he was uttering nearly to the letter Isaiah's 2600 year-old words when he ripped up his draft of a written certification upon learning that the book was sealed: "I cannot read a sealed book" (JS-H 1:65).

He also could not have predicted, as self-interested as he was in either glorifying himself in its translation, or in discrediting it altogether, how the coming forth of the Book of Mormon and the consequently Restored Church and its advancement would resemble the marvelous work and wonder Isaiah clearly prophesied. And only those open to the mantic mode of truth-seeking will come to know of its truth, further hiding the wisdom of the world's Christian, but misguided prudent men and other scholars.

2. As part of my own project of study to bring scripture as much to life as I can, I did a little digging into the scholarly atmosphere of the day. Maybe a detail or two here will help someone else get more out of their study as well. Contextual elements like this also deepen my sense of how God prepares the conditions for His actions.

First off, Anthon wasn't an Egyptologist, and while he had a background in other ancient cultures and languages, some of his knowledge of Egypt could only have been in the infancy of the West's earliest modern understanding of Egyptian scripts. Napoleonic campaigns in Egypt brought to France and England a number of artifacts whose procurement was of dubious ethics, but whose importance to history, archeology, and linguistics has proven immense. One such was the famous Rosetta Stone which sat undeciphered in a British museum for decades before a young student in the fledgling discipline of "Egyptology" made a few key assumptions about the hieroglyphs on the stele that appeared to match the meaning of the Greek script it also contained. This Jean-François Champollion had to battle a scholarly misconception about hieroglyphs themselves. It was well known that ideographs, glyphs that convey an entire idea rather than transcribe the phonetic form of the idea, can serve as vehicles for multiple languages. It was also well established that across the millenia that Egypt used writing, there were three identifiable scripts that the spoken language, which also evolved over such lengthy periods, made use of. Because the kinds of monarchs and priests who commanded the construction of monuments were also the kind to want themselves memorialized in the most indelible ways, the surviving exemplars of one of these scripts--hieroglyphics--was almost exclusively found in temples and funerary edifices. This led to the false conclusion that hieroglyphics was only used for religious purposes and therefore didn't represent the spoken language of the normal people. Champollion contested this idea, showing how there might be a progression of the more purely ideographic hieroglyphics to the more frequent phonetic markings used on more corruptible papyrii in the hieratic script could finally lead to the more alphabetic demotic script which itself was likely connected as an ancestor to the modern-day Coptic tongue still spoken in parts of Egypt (it's one of the world's oldest continuously spoken languages still extant). This logical leap allowed him to parse out some names on the Rosetta Stone that were attested elsewhere, and then abstract out a few phonetic symbols which then gave him a key to more and more, until the full stone had its translation worked out.

His work on the Rosetta Stone was published posthumously not long after completed, as Champollion died relatively young (age 41) of a stroke that many attributed to the after-effects of an arduous journey to Egypt and back to France. That publication was less than 6 years old, and not likely available in translated form for the contemporary New York professor Charles Anthon to have digested (although I have no idea whether he spoke French) to have very deep insight as to the nature or meaning of any Egyptian script let alone one written in a derived form of Demotic used to transcribe Hebrew rather than the ancestor tongue of the Copts, and then modified over the thousand years of Nephite linguistic evolution.

The state of Egyptology in the US in 1828, when Martin Harris made the trip to New York to obtain second opinions as to the wisdom of his investment in the Book of Mormon translation and publication projects he was heavily leveraged on, simply didn't have a whole lot to it just yet.

But even if it did, the way to test it is in its pages, not through scholarly examination of the archeological materials. The way to know if Joseph Smith was a prophet is to pray, as he did, with real intent and having faith in Christ to know if the Book of Mormon is true. And this manner of proving the prophets isn't contained only in its pages, but is also among the Savior's own prescriptions as recorded in Matthew: "by their fruits ye shall know them". The fruits and gifts of the Spirit seem to scientism too subjective, but they bring precisely the testimony of truth the world needs. The marvelous work and a wonder is afoot.

Line Upon Line - JS-H 1:45-46, 49, 54

 

From the last post describing Moroni's visit to a repentant, 17 year-old Joseph Smith, we concentrated on how Smith's familiarity with scripture prepared him to received paradigm-shifting earthquakes as new contexts for prophecies became the content of an angelic message. We also noted how little of this content was relayed beyond Smith himself--as third party readers, we are told that the bulk of the message is not recorded here, just important summary details.

As a pedagogue who strives for excellence in teaching, what stuck out to me in the next verses was the mercy and didactic skill evident in Moroni's subsequent visits. With Joseph's mind still reeling from familiar passages given new light, the angel again penetrates the room and speaks: 

"He commenced, and again related the very same things which he had done at his first visit, without the least variation" (1:45)

There is a brief addition to the message this time, but then, after leaving Smith alone to ponder, yet again the messenger emerges from his luminous conduit, and, as Smith relates: 

"what was my surprise when again I beheld the same messenger at my bedside, and heard him rehearse or repeat over again to me the same things as before" (1:46)

After the repetition, without the least variation once more, we must assume, there was again an addition to the communication which built upon what was now already firmly anchored in the memory before the being of light once again departed.

Finally, as the night dissipated and the work day on the farm began without Joseph's ability to contribute much, the angel made one last appearance on that property, which is recorded for us with with the inclusion of: 

"He then again related unto me all that he had related to me the previous night" (1:49)

There's a double effect that this pedagogical method produces. First, repetition is the soul of teaching, and reinforces the message and details at each retelling. But it also structurally sets apart the non-repeated elements as even more memorable. In this case, the core was an exposition of scripture--of prior prophecy and pending fulfillment, all packaged in a new paradigm's arc, and the non-repeated additions align as follows: 1. a new prophecy of impending judgments (implying that Joseph's role would help mitigate them); 2. a warning to hold the plates sacred and avoid material temptation to profit therefrom; 3. a commandment to bring his father into the circle of trust about these visits.

I find these additions significant. They ground Smith in a few important ideas: 1. that God provides mantic manifestations and will continue to do so--He's not limited to speaking only through past prophets; 2. that God wants to prepare his servants against particular temptations and forces seeking to stymy the work; 3. that support in his functions and service as prophet will include not only heavenly sources, but earthly ones that know him best and care for him best--that family hearts were being prepared to accept the paradigm shifts that will come through him.

As we each receive callings to serve in the Church, this seems to me applicable as a pattern: 1. we need to seek His specific word on behalf of those within our influence, and expect that He will guide us; 2. He is interested in our success, which includes arming us with foreknowledge of our adversaries; 3. We have a circle of support He is concurrently priming to bear us up as we commit to serve.

On the fifth visit--the one at the hill Cumorah--we have the only one in this passage for which there is no mention of the actual arrival. We don't know at what point the angel appeared--whether it was before the unearthing of the box, during the course of removing earth, obtaining a lever, and peering under the stone, or at the moment of his first attempt to handle and remove the box's contents, as if in sudden warning. However we imagine the scene, what's clear is that the pedagogy was not complete--that the repetitions would continue, at regular intervals, for years. This would both allow Joseph to mature intellectually, spiritually, physically and socially, and would allow the message itself to have space for growth. 

Finally, a quick note on the reception of revelation. As Smith closes this part of his record, he deploys, for the first time, a suggestive term that hints toward a more mutual interaction than the previous verses. As he describes a prayer for forgiveness becoming an angelic visit, his narrative focus is appropriately on the messenger, the message and its reception. But the Cumorah visit and its subsequent annual visits--his fifth through ninth interactions with Moroni--seem described in a way that might have also applied to the previous 4: as "interviews". Joseph is allowed to question, to ask for clarification, to converse. His learning is active, not passive, and this also forms part of the model we should strive for as students of the Divine nature. Let us bring our curiosity, and allow our humility to show through active engagement with the voice of the Lord, whether it be through text (reading AND writing), through intermediaries, or through more direct representatives like the Holy Ghost. As He teaches us line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little, there a little, let us be agents, moving with our minds and our feet ever closer to the higher truths He wants to reveal to us.

Context is King - Joseph Smith-History 1:41

 

"He quoted many other passages of scripture, and offered many explanations which cannot be mentioned here."

Untangling context is sometimes a necessary chore. All valid interpretation depends on it, and yet we, as readers, may have varying attentiveness to or knowledge of its elements, and varying judgments as to the elements' salience.

Take the question of how to understand Moroni's first visit to Joseph Smith. You and I, who have read the Book of Mormon and know that this Moroni was its last prophet can't avoid an imposing image when we see the very name. This was a giant of a man--I make no claim on his height, although it's hard not to imagine him as a strong warrior, because we know he was a general in the last of the Nephite armies--whose faith kept him alive and kept sacred records secure for 20+ years after his civilization fell in a great and last battle, and its enemies relentlessly hunted him. We know him as a stalwart Christian who transcribed the record of the Jaredites onto the limited space of the gold plates that he would eventually be inspired to hide up in the hill where Joseph Smith was led to find them. This Jaredite civilization also fell, and its fall was caused by such similar forces to his own, that this Moroni--who knew neither his own people nor his enemies would receive this record, but a Gentile people far into the future--felt the lessons so deeply and powerfully that he felt too weak to communicate them in the ideographic script available to him. In one of the most memorable passages in his recordings, the Lord speaks to him to assure him that only fools would mock at his weakness, but that if men like him came to Christ with their weakness, the Lord would make weak things strong. And how strong is he now! He has come as an angel of glory, able to shine forth, speak messages of world-turning importance with authority, and act as the agent of the fulfillment of ancient prophecy. To us who know him already, this angel is a sign of God's grace, an inspiration, an encouragement to be faithful as he was, to push through despair, challenge, and ill-disposed conditions he had no control over to trust Christ would make something better of himself and his efforts than he could. He is a glorified being as we all can be.

But Joseph Smith at the time didn't know him or his writings or backstory. All 17-year old Joseph Smith saw was a nameless messenger from God of fearfully bright appearance who came as a faithful response to the young man's sincere repentance, who shared news of a calling from God that Joseph needed to rise to, who gave news of a hidden book and tools of its translation, and then who spent the bulk of his visitation time citing and explaining scripture. Smith received basically a heavenly sermon, with text and commentary all pointing toward a Restoration of scriptures, of authorities, of structures, and of a mantic approach to revelation. To the youth in the room, this wasn't a personal example of how strong the Lord could make a weak person, Moroni was instead a dedicated servant delivering messages word for word from God, revealing purpose, giving directions (like those not to show the plates to anyone), and using most of his time and words to contextualize this purpose inside a trajectory of previously revealed prophecies. Moroni was an object of awe, a snap-to-it moment for the young Smith, an abstract position more than a person, and while the bearer of an important and intense message, he was not meaningful in and of himself.

And now take a step away from the agents in the narrative and consider the narrator and his context. This 17-year old experiencing Moroni for the first time is no longer 17, but rather 33. He's a mature leader of a Restored church of over 17,000 members, has completed both the translation of the Book of Mormon and of the Bible, has received over a hundred revelations, and has felt the burden of laying foundations of community amid sometimes mortally hostile conditions. To this more mature narrator looking back on his younger self and selecting the details of his experience most propitious both for responding to growing numbers of critics and for affirming the faith of the believers, Moroni was neither the faceless messenger nor the strengthened and glorified mortal. He was, instead, a seed--the starting point for a trajectory of mighty growth, the miraculous flashpoint from which a growing fire of faith would envelop the earth. Moroni wasn't merely the purveyor of prophecy, but was himself the fulfillment of prophecy, and he signaled the fulfillment of many more. Smith spent much of the year of this history's dictation falsely accused in prison and awaiting trial. Mobs had threatened his people and thought they cut the head off of the snake when they imprisoned Joseph. Joseph's reminder of Moroni as a beginning reminded all who had the faith to see it, that this wasn't Joseph's work--Smith was not the head of the proverbial snake, and no earthly power could stop the growth of the Church because it was the work of the Lord.

Do you see how the same figure of Moroni can have three separate valences according to the contextual details we choose as salient to our interpretive position? Do you see how all three can be true simultaneously? Do you see how the more initiation you have into context, the more you can draw out of the same passage?

Now read the cited verse at the top of this post again.

Smith notes that Moroni relayed verses from Malachi with slightly different wording than in the King James Version he was familiar with. Moroni had no earthly memory of that wording. We have his record, and we know that while Malachi's writings were accomplished a continent away, Christ Himself cited Malachi's words for the Nephites. And those mirrored the KJV exactly.

Between the two versions, and the new context for their delivery, Smith's mind and heart were beginning to open to paradigm-shifting realities.

Moroni also cited Joel and Acts, both scriptures with which he could have had no record (his people's connection with ancient Israel was broken by the year 600, just a decade and less than a half away from the Babylonian exile, and therefore their records couldn't have included Joel or Luke, 1st century author of the Acts of the Apostles), therefore which he could only have learned by some non-terrestrial form of learning. And the context and the guidance given pointed Smith to more new understanding of the imminence of these prophecies' fulfilment.

And apparently there are many others Moroni cited, expounded, and impressed upon the young mind of a Smith hungry for personal forgiveness, and for a purpose to pursue in life, but not necessarily one of such scriptural import. The context and Moroni's way of authoritatively guiding him through all the way from message to interpretation, must have blown Smith's mind.

What ways have new contexts provided you with new applications for familiar scriptures? Do new callings in the Church, or new seasons of life (adolescence, career changes, parenthood, parenthood of adolescents, retirement, serious illness, etc.) give you new perspective on the Lord's Word? Have you allowed Him to blow your mind recently? I promise you, the more you learn about the original context, the more accurately you'll see new applications of truths to your own situation.

The First Visions

 

I broke my own code in a lot of my analysis of Section 1. Because most of the other sections are chronological, we'll get a chance to get back up to speed, but I consider an understanding of context one of the most cardinal hermeneutic principles, and I didn't give enough. The words means things themselves, but unless you have a decent sense of who is writing, to whom, under what circumstances, as framed by which general discursive fields (the conjuncture of historical forces, current debates, broader intellectual movements relevant to the text, etc.), you're very likely to misinterpret something, and maybe even something pivotal.

So let's do a little work establishing things here. Joseph Smith is writing his own account of a heavenly visitation he claims to have received in 1820. The version we're reading, penned in 1838 by dictation to a scribe for publication purposes, is canon as of 1880. But it is not the first recording, and is not considered canonical at the date of its publication. While there are times a prophet speaks authoritatively and the Lord's words must be carried out immediately, this record is of a more testimonial nature, and is more rich in implications than instructions or doctrinal explanation. And while Smith told oral versions of this story to many over the years, even his first written version was 12 years after the fact, in 1832.  Why then?  Why wait 12 years before publishing a first account of something so important?

In the summer of 1832, Joseph's wife of 5 years was pregnant with their 4th child, but the first three had died, as well as one of the twins they had adopted when their own survived only hours after birth. This was also a time of the early spread of the Church. Just 2 years prior, the translation and publication of the Book of Mormon was complete and the Church was restored, and even more recently revelations had been received calling on the Saints to relocate from wherever they originally converted through first missionary efforts to Kirtland, Ohio.

And while growth in the church was robust, so was pushback. Competing churches decried the doctrine and local newspapers were happy to publish inaccuracies mingled with facts so long as it sold copies, which it seemed to in direct proportion to the growth of the church. This is especially important in a protestant world of remunerated pastors whose livelihoods, not just doctrines, would be under threat by a popular Christian denomination preaching that authority didn't come from votes or degrees, and that local priests should provide their own material support and not be compensated for preaching and ministry. Worse, if the Joseph's story were taken seriously, it implies no need for them as intermediaries--either dispensers of authority or dispenser's of Biblical interpretation. 

Joseph's main prophetic priority at this time was split between revelatory work on a revision of the Bible and meeting the various and frequent administrative needs, which included caring for the training and spiritual needs of growing numbers of converts, group and doctrinal discipline (there was at least one competing "prophet" who had deceived some from the inside) and the codification and editing of the "Book of Commandments" for first publication. But public affairs was also a concern and discipline was sometimes thorny, and more than one disaffected recent convert turned sour enough to publish biased and distorted testimony, or worse. A few short months before the first written First Vision was penned, Joseph was tarred and feathered by a mob led by just one such disgruntled ex-member.

It is in this environment--a young, inexperienced father, acquainted with grief and 3rd degree burns, in a barely civilized land of nominal freedom, but in which mob rule was often more likely to settle a dispute than a constitutionally conforming judiciary, under the intense pressures of leadership--that Smith relays the details he deems salient for others to read on his personal story of conviction for sin and answers to prayers, mustering his entire 2nd grade education to write it himself. This is a departure. His norm since obtaining the gold plates seems to have been prioritizing the publishing of translation, and revelation, and the administration of church and community affairs. His concentration, in other words, was on recording God's words and work to the world, not his own faith journey. 

What are those details? While there are significant shifts of focus and detail between the various accounts he gave and others shared that he gave, the canonical version lays out the same basic framework of a youth stymied by competing interpretations of scripture, noting the mismatch between doctrine and behavior and between Biblical and extra-biblical elements of extant churches, and faithful prayer, with intent to act upon it, that led to a theophany. The visit from the Lord spoke of forgiveness from sin, testified that Christ was He who atones, and then warned of an impending anger against unrighteousness, and about lips near Him, but hearts far from Him--all of which confirmed Joseph's tentative conclusions previously drawn from scripture and observation. This early manuscript version clearly establishes the pattern, accessible to all, of personal experience with God, of aloofness from already established Christian denominations, and of the Savior actively and personally directing the preparations for the judgment at His second coming. But it doesn't as clearly do three things: 1. claim God the Father was there and spoke first; 2. claim Smith was interested in joining one of the churches, but was told not to; 3. claim Smith was told he would be a prophet to restore the church.

Tackling those back to front, the 3rd thing isn't in the 1838 canonized version either. That's a misconception critics and uncareful readers assume. The other two, however, are real and are addressed in the following paragraphs.

I have a hard time reconciling point #2. The more polished 1838 version contains the parenthetical comment in verse 18 "(for at this time it had never entered into my heart that all were wrong)." The 1832 version reads: "my mind become excedingly distressed for I become convicted of my sins and by searching the scriptures I found that mand <​mankind​> did not come unto the Lord but that they had apostatised from the true and liveing faith and there was no society or denomination that built upon the gospel of Jesus Christ as recorded in the new testament." In other words, The 1832 version makes the sacred grove theophany sound like it was about mercy for the inability for himself or anyone to be saved from sin because there were no Biblically accurate organizations available to administer the Gospel, whereas the 1838 version makes the primary question about wanting to join one, but not knowing which and not knowing "none" would be the answer.

What strikes me is how the earlier record seems to draw a different picture of Smith's confidence level in his own calling as prophet. By 1832 he has already had massive and extended experiences with angelic visitations, translations, and other revelations. The content of some of the revelations prior to this date include a Book of Mormon passage all but naming him outright as a prophet so pivotal that his namesake, the original Joseph of Egypt, had prophesied about his role three and a half millenia beforehand. And the preface to the Doctrine and Covenants itself made explicit the principle that the Lord speaks by servants. So he should be as confident in himself as the Lord is calling him prophet. Why not start with the start and show the progression from First Vision to Moroni's revelation of the gold plates, and on to the other revelations of the Restored Church?

My best hypothesis, for now, is that as authorized as he was, as exemplary as his story could be for others, he wanted to make conversion to the Restored Gospel about Christ, not himself. The pathway to covenantal belonging in the Lord's true church was through accepting Joseph Smith as a prophet, yes, just as accepting the Father--as Pharisees claimed to want--had to come through that same Jesus they rejected. But accepting Smith as a prophet came through discovering the Book of Mormon was true, not through an analysis of Smith's own testimony of his direct dealings with heaven. At least, that was the pattern from 1829 on.

And if that's the case, then it might make a little sense that he was less concerned with crafting a polished response to extant criticisms in the biased press (which seems to be the main motivation in 1838, meaning he had multiple false testimonies to address in a single source then) and more concerned with creating solidarity with new converts, many of whom had drawn similar conclusions--they were convinced of Christ, but knew that none of the denominations claiming to represent Him and His church were Biblically sound.

In other words, it was about structure, not personality for Smith. The main un-named, but unmistakable contrasts from this account that investigators to the church would not fail to note in their day and context is that to gain access to the Lord's forgiveness, one could not rely on intermediaries: neither traditional authorities nor Protestant interpreters. There is a Church, and there is scripture, but God's desire was for a direct mantic connection, not a sophic one that bound Christ up in mediated limits under which God doesn't speak anymore, and miracles are no longer in His toolkit. Joseph's story was of personal salvation, and offered an experiment that all could reproduce. But it was not a doctrinal analysis designed to compel reform through argumentation--instead it was the testimony of a demonstration of the need for an entirely restored paradigm of direct revelation.

In this way, Smith's study and experience noting that New Testament patterns are not present among the various churches led him to a hypothesis and an existential angst that He knew only God could resolve, so he asked for that wisdom under the intention to join a church anyway. And this thought is what reconciles the two versions, finally: the anyway. He sincerely thought they were all in apostasy, but it hadn't yet entered into his heart that this meant he should still NOT join one. At least, to me, this nuance helps me hold the two as possibly consistent on, even with a surface detail that seems contradictory.

Smith was likely more self-effacing when the membership was around a more manageable 2000 than when six more years of growth, a population of over 17 thousand, and the experience of struggle against bad press, mob activity, and bad-faith legal challenges to his leadership. In the summer of 1832, by my very schematic extrapolation, Smith is in the early New Testament phase of his "translation" of the King James Bible. We know he worked on it from June 1830 to July 1833, and if one assumes a fairly consistent pace that speeds up when verses require no changes, this reasonably puts the 600,000 words of the Old Testament upon which only 1300 of the verses required alteration most likely in the rear view mirror by spring 1832 as the 2100 verses he altered among the 180,000 words of the New Testament slowed him down and likely took up the last year of the project. Adding this context help remind us of how fresh on his memory the New Testament passages would have been when feeling inspired to alternate writing duties with Frederick G. Williams in a notebook to make that first record of the First Vision for compilation among other Church history records from its infancy. It must have been striking to Smith how structures, principles, and procedures that had been revealed to him directly in the previous 2-3 years were lining up with the passages he was freshly translating. The pattern was not sola scriptura, it was sola revelatio. And those revelations were both consistent and corrective without the need to address 1800 years of argument and commentary in a precise analog to how Jesus' ministry corrected and restored the Spirit of the Law of Moses to Jews whose commentary and creedal additions had contravened it in the most important of ways in His day.

And therein is why the 1838 version became necessary and remains canonical: with the more explicit detail that the Father was also present with the Son in that pillar of fire, those who believe have no need for Niceae, or for a works-cited list dozens of references long to rebut the false doctrine of the trinity, of the closed canon, of the changeable God who is incapable of miracles and direct revelation today, and of a Christ who is one with His Father in an inexplicable and "mysterious" way. Instead Joseph learned before the first word from either deity was uttered, by sight alone, that they were unified, not conflated; that there was a more tightly analogous way to how we need to become one with Christ--not literally, but symbolically; not in person, but in purpose.

And despite all of this, we should remember that while the authenticity of the 1832 account as a draft document is not contested, there was not a choice to publish it until it was lost and recovered from historical vaults in 1965. What was published was the 1838 canonical account.

This vision, and what it implies, fills me with wonder and hope, and because I've received a witness from the Lord through His Spirit that the Book of Mormon is true, and that Joseph Smith was truly a prophet, I am in pursuit of the Lord's pattern of revelation as Smith was--through study and prayer, faith to act and in expectation of direct direction. The heavens are not closed, His authority remains among His servants, and we can become like Him and His Father, as He taught, through unity of purpose with Them. May we all seek His refinements to our purpose and direction as we approach His Son with our weakness, sin, and lack of wisdom.