Joseph Smith's First Vision/Paul's accounts/Do Greek scholars solve the discrepancies in Paul's vision accounts

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Criticism

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. For example, 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."^[1]

In support of this claim, Abanes cites W.E. Vine, Vine's Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words, p. 544.

Source(s) of the Criticism

• Richard Abanes, Becoming Gods: A Closer Look at 21st-Century Mormonism (Harvest House Publishers: 2005). 42, 43 (sidebar). ( Index of claims )

Response

The two verses usually at issue are Acts 9:7 and Acts 22:9:

The debate

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?	Clear contradiction?
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.	Clear contradiction?

Abanes' source

The work cited by Abanes is not a recent work of Greek scholarship—it was first published in 1940.^[2] In the reference for ἀκούω, we read:

...the usual word denoting "to hear," is used (a) intransitively, e.g., Matt. 11:15; Mark 4;23; (b) transitively when the object is expressed, sometimes in the accusative case, sometimes in the genitive. Thus in Acts 9:7, "hearing the voice," the noun "voice" is in the partitive genitive case [i.e., hearing (something) of], whereas in Acts 22:9, "they heard not the voice," the construction is with the accusative. This removes the idea of any contradiction. The former indicates a "hearing" of the sound, the latter indicates the meaning or message of the voice (this they did not hear). "The former denotes the sensational perception, the latter (the accusative case) the thing perceived" (Cremer).

Abanes' claim

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	"Case" is a part of speech, it indicates the role a noun (here, "the voice") plays in the sentence. English does not use cases.
Meaning	One hears the sound	One hears the message	--

Various translations

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.	Clear contradiction?
NIV (1984)	The men traveling with Saul stood there speechless; they heard the sound but did not see anyone.	My companions saw the light, but they did not understand the voice of him who was speaking to me.	The footnote to 9:7 argues that the men "heard the sound" but "did not understand" it (citing Acts 22:9).
New English Translation (NET)	(Now the men who were traveling with him stood there speechless, because they heard the voice but saw no one.)	Those who were with me saw the light, but did not understand the voice of the one who was speaking to me.	Footnote to 9:7 acknowledges the contradiction: "Acts 22:9 appears to indicate that they saw the light but did not hear a voice." Footnote for 22:9 reads "Grk “did not hear” (but see Acts 9:7). BDAG 38 s.v. ἀκούω 7 has “W. acc. τὸν νόμον understand the law Gal 4:21; perh. Ac 22:9; 26:14…belong here.” If the word has this sense here, then a metonymy is present, since the lack of effect is put for a failure to appreciate what was heard."

Conclusion

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Endnotes

1. [note]  Richard Abanes, Becoming Gods: A Closer Look at 21st-Century Mormonism (Harvest House Publishers: 2005). 42, 43 (sidebar). ( Index of claims )
2. [note]  W.E. Vine's M.A., Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words (1940). off-site