Steven Harper - Listening to Joseph's Smith's First Vision

Brother Steven Harper wrote a beautiful article on Joseph Smith's first vision.  It can be found at
http://ldsmag.com/article/1/12123

He also has a book coming out dealing with the same material.

For many the multiple first vision accounts catch them by surprise and unaware.  Critics point out the differences but when they are studied and examined there is little cause for alarm.

Some Quotes from the article that are worth mentioning here

In regards to why people are alarmed when notified of multiple accounts, Bro. Harper states

It’s not knowing the accounts that undermines testimony, it’s thinking that you know more about them than you do....

he gave his wry smile and said in his understated way that he didn’t think they would have that trouble if they were more inclined to read...

They blamed Joseph when they discovered that his story did not match their unfounded assumptions, which were nothing more than hypothetical ideas about what he should have said if his experience were real...

Which feeds right into what I see as the main issue of faith crisis, namely bad assumptions and expectations.

Bro. Harper has spent a lot of time with each account, many of them having held the original manuscripts they come from and he stated

I felt like I could discern between the two types of revelation in his several accounts, which helped me see that the accounts are less like photographs of what happened in the grove than they are like movies of what that experience in the grove meant to Joseph not only at the time but over time.

In regards the account where Joseph only mentions seeing the Lord he states

In other words, there is no reason to suppose that when Joseph says, “I saw two personages,” he means that he saw them at exactly the same time for precisely the same length of time, or that he did not also see others besides the two. Moreover, because the 1835 account and two of the secondary statements assert that Joseph saw one being who then revealed the other, we could interpret the 1832 account to be saying that Joseph saw one being who then revealed another while referring to both beings as “the Lord”: “the <Lord> opened the heavens upon me and I saw the Lord...”

Referring to why We shouldn't expect Joseph to be more clear stating his experience. 

 They defied description, after all.