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FAIR is a non-profit organization dedicated to providing well-documented answers to criticisms of the doctrine, practice, and history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
There is a challenge that has been issued on the internet related to the details of Joseph Smith's first vision. The issuer of the challenge promises to pay money "to anyone who can show that Joseph Smith even CLAIMED that he saw God, the Father and Jesus Christ as separate personages when he was a teenager and that they told him to join none of the then-existing churches." [1]
Like the rest of us, the person who put up this challenge understands quite well that unless there is some new documentary source discovered, we simply don't have this. The date is important of course, because after 1835 we do have several things that point to this (so it isn't all coming late in the 1880s and 1890s). We just don't have a lot of good documentation in the period leading up to 1835. Certainly by 1838, Joseph Smith has provided us with a detailed description.
So, part of this is because there wasn't a lot of records being kept (which is normal - how much information do we have about most people living in that time frame?). Part of this is because the members of the Church were being moved around frequently - at a time when they simply didn't carry lots of extraneous stuff (Kirtland, Missouri, and hints of heading to Nauvoo then).
Of course, we do have other interesting documentation that is good. We have a letter from Oliver Cowdery written in November of 1829, that was published in 1829 in a newspaper where he talks about having seen the angel and the gold plates personally. We don't have the original letter of course (which shows how easily this stuff gets lost) - we only know of the letter because we do have copies of the newspaper. On top of this, the question is sometimes raised in connection with the idea that Joseph only later gets this idea of the separation of persons in the Godhead. And yet, long before 1835 (back in 1831) we have the material in the Book of Moses coming to the Saints, and we have other doctrinal statements that contest this point of view. So the idea that this was an invention after 1835 is hard to accept also.
And of course, this same sort of question could be asked about all sorts of other things. Remember the mount of transfiguration? Do we have any contemporary witnessed to that event with Jesus, and some of his disciples in Palestine? The gospels come far too late to be considered contemporary (and way, way to late by the standards provided here).
So the whole purpose of this challenge isn't really to try and get people to prove something, it is to try and suggest that because this one aspect of early Mormon history isn't well documented in a contemporary time frame, that there is some huge problem. And the question is whether or not we really believe that. Certainly the early Mormons who followed Joseph Smith believed that it wasn't important. And realistically most Mormons today don't think it's all that significant either.
Notes
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