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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.
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Joseph Smith left several accounts of his First Vision. None of these accounts is identical with any other. As the main page discusses, some critics wish to argue that Joseph's vision accounts are mutually contradictory, and thus that there was no vision.
Latter-day Saints often point out that the Bible's accounts of Paul's vision on the road to Damascus appear to be contradictory. Yet, the Church's sectarian critics accept Paul's account as true despite the Bible containing apparently frank contradictions in its accounts. While accepting or explaining away these discrepancies, the critics nevertheless refuse to give Joseph Smith the same latitude. Members of the Church have long pointed out that this is a clear double standard, designed to bias the audience against Joseph from the beginning.
Perhaps because of the force of this argument, some critics have begun to argue that no contradiction exists between the versions of Paul's vision.
The two verses usually at issue are Acts 9:7 and Acts 22:9. For example, BJU professor and Wikipedia editor John Foxe claims that
"There is no conflict in the three accounts of Paul's vision if you read Acts 22:9 in any version other than the KJV. For instance, in the New American Standard Bible and the New International version, it says that Paul's companions did not "understand the voice"--that is hear what was uttered with understanding." [1]
Author Richard Abanes wrote that contradictions in the stories of Paul's vision were
"long ago resolved by scholars analyzing the Greek texts. The discrepancies in Paul's account involve modern ignorance of the Greek wording used."[2]
In support of this claim, Abanes cites W.E. Vine, Vine's Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words, p. 544.
The debate centers on the word translated "hearing" or "heard" in these verses:
Bible version | Acts 9:7 | Acts 22:9 | Comments |
---|---|---|---|
Summary |
Heard voice, saw no one? |
Saw light, heard no voice? |
|
KJV |
And the men which journeyed with him stood speechless, hearing a voice, but seeing no man. |
And they that were with me saw indeed the light, and were afraid; but they heard not the voice of him that spake to me. |
|
The work cited by Abanes is not a recent work of Greek scholarship—it was first published in 1940.[3] In the reference for ακούω, we read:
Thus, by this source, Abanes hopes to argue that there can be "no idea of any contradiction":
Factor | Acts 9:7 | Acts 22:9 | Comments |
---|---|---|---|
Case |
partitive genitive |
accusative |
|
Meaning |
One hears the sound |
One hears the message |
-- |
We have seen Abanes appeal to a source that was more than sixty years old at the time of his writing. Have modern Greek scholars anything to add to our discussion?
Daniel Wallace (a non-LDS, conservative Christian scholar) wrote of this same issue:
Thus, Wallace is here dealing with the exact verses under discussion, and notes the exact argument which Abanes makes. Does he agree? Let us see:
Thus, the New Testament itself does not agree with Abanes' reading. Far from supporting him, Greek scholarship argues against his solution—the Bible has more examples where his supposed "rule" is broken than when it is followed. (Even Acts itself contains three counterexamples!)
It would seem that this approach has been developed by those who wish to maintain the idea of biblical inerrancy in the face of the Greek evidence.
Despite Abanes' claim, Greek scholarship has not resolved this issue as he claims. In fact, his use of the scholarship is dated, he ignores contrary views, and does not seem to realize that the Bible text itself (including the Acts of the Apostles) violates his supposed 'rule' more often than it keeps it. He is shown to be unreliable on matters even tangential to his attack on the Church.
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