Does Lucy Smith's manuscript differ from Joseph Smith's account of the First Vision?

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• Spoken in blissful ignorance of the Historical Record. -4
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  There are currently 9 (nine) different versions of the First Vision and they all conflict and contradict each other. Several of them were written by Joseph Smith and they ALL conflict.
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  http://www.irr.org/mit/first-vision/fvision-accounts.html
  http://www.irr.org/mit/first-vision.html
  http://www.lds-mormon.com/fv.shtml

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  by Mister IT is trying to Liahona outta here on July 11th, 2009

• Again, http://tinyurl.com/8firsts . Different details from one to the other, but aside from the minor detail of his age (in one account he indicates that he was 15), I don‘t see any contradiction.
   
  http://www.answerbag.com/a_view/3711374

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  by the Otter on July 13th, 2009

• >I don't see any contradicgtion<
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  [edit] Contradictions
  In the 1832 account Smith said that by "Searching the Scriptures" he had concluded that "there was no society or denomination that built upon the Gospel of Christ".[139] In the 1838 account, he said that he was unable to determine which, if any, of the churches he studied were correct[140] and then that it had never entered into his heart that all churches were wrong.[141] ...
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  According to Smith, he indirectly mentioned the vision to his mother shortly after it occurred.[144] In her several recollections of the events that led to the founding of the LDS Church, there is no extant record that Lucy Mack Smith ever mentioned Joseph having had a vision before his bedroom visitation from Moroni in 1823. Lucy also said that Joseph's vision of Moroni followed a family discussion about the "diversity of churches."[145]
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  Joseph Smith may have become involved with at least two Methodist churches between 1820 and 1830.[146] While he almost certainly never formally joined the Methodist church, he did associate himself with the Methodists eight years after he said he had been instructed by God not to join any established denomination.[147] In 1828, following the death of Smith's first-born son and the loss of 116 pages of the Book of Mormon manuscript, Smith asked to be enrolled in a Methodist class in Harmony Township, Pennsylvania,[148] but a cousin of his wife "objected to the inclusion of a 'practicing necromancer' on the Methodist roll."[149]
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  by Mister IT is trying to Liahona outta here on July 13th, 2009

• Grant Palmer has noted that Joseph Smith had a clear motive for changing his story in 1838, a period of crisis within the Latter Day Saint Movement. At the time there was open dissent against Smith's leadership. A quarter of the original Quorum of the Twelve Apostles and some 300 members—perhaps fifteen percent of the total membership—had left the church. Palmer argues that Smith "fearing the unraveling of the church," wrote a new "more impressive version of his epiphany" in which Smith claimed that his original call had come from God the Father and Jesus Christ rather than from an angel.[150]
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  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Vision
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  (And, yes, I have indeed deliberately deleted the LDS Apologetist's spin that the author of this WikiPedia article injetcted. No need to point it out. I have a firm policy against deciminating the work of known liars for the Lord.)

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  by Mister IT is trying to Liahona outta here on July 13th, 2009

• I see. So you leave the anti-LdS apologist’s spin but delete the pro-LdS apologist’s spin, because the one that supports your position is trustworthy while the one that points out its shortcomings, needs his well poisoned. Gotcha.
   
  I guess the best response, then, would be to cite the other anti-LdS apologist’s spin:
   
     “My instinct is to attribute a sincerity to Joseph Smith. And yet at the same time, as an
      evangelical Christian, I do not believe that the members of the godhead really appeared to
      him and told him that he should start on a mission of, among other things, denouncing
      the kinds of things that I believe as a Presbyterian. I can't believe that. And yet at the same
      time, I really don't believe that he was simply making up a story that he knew to be false in
      order to manipulate people and to gain power over a religious movement. And so I live with
      the mystery” (Interview with Evangelical theologian Richard Mouw, for PBS documentary *The
      Mormons*).
   
  As that same Wikipedia page cites:
   
     “What are the main problems of interpreting so many accounts? The first problem is the
      interpreter. One person perceives harmony and interconnections while another overstates
      differences.”
   
  …and again:
   
     “The biggest trap is comparing description in one report with silence in another” (Anderson,
      *Joseph Smith’s Testimony of the First Vision*; available online at
      http://tinyurl.com/jstestoffv).

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  by the Otter on July 14th, 2009