Backman argues that the four accounts describe the same divine encounter from different perspectives, for different audiences and purposes. He reads their varying descriptions of the personages and messages together rather than as stages in a changing theology, and holds that revival activity across the wider region fits Smith’s 1820 setting.
- Milton V. Backman Jr., “Verification of the 1838 Account of the First Vision,” The Pearl of Great Price: Revelations from God (1989): 197–212.
- Milton V. Backman Jr., “Awakenings in the Burned-Over District: New Light on the Historical Setting of the First Vision,” BYU Studies 9, no. 3 (1969): 301–320.
All of Joseph Smith’s accounts of the First Vision contribute to our understanding of that sacred experience.