Joseph Smith’s 1820 First Vision Account

Record summary

Joseph Smith’s account of a youthful vision of God and Jesus in a wooded area near Palmyra became a central origin narrative for the Latter-day Saint movement. The event is preserved in several accounts written or dictated between 1832 and 1842, with differences in wording, audience, and theological emphasis. It matters for comparing visionary autobiography, memory, institutional canonization, and nineteenth-century religious experimentation. Historians generally agree that the accounts and their transmission can be documented, while interpretations of the vision remain confessional and contested.