Review: Steven C. Harper. First Vision: Memory and Mormon Origins. New York: Oxford University Press, 2019.

Authors

Stephen C. Taysom

Keywords

First Vision, memory, Mormon origins, logical positivism, religious history

Abstract

Steven C. Harper’s book First Vision: Memory and Mormon Origins is, if nothing else, perfectly titled. The book is like none other of the dozens written over the years about what Latter-day Saints call “the first vision.” To this point, authors interested enough to take up the subject have done so out of a variety of motives, which in turn have predictably produced an equally various collection of writings. The most common motives, of course, were, and remain, the apologetic and critical (what used to be known as the “anti-Mormon”). Harper demonstrates, with admirable lightness of touch, the fundamental, categorical mistake shared by both of these approaches: their entire conceits are tied to old ideas of logical positivism. Stated plainly, logical positivism is the idea that a reconstructable past exists, and if historians search long enough, with sufficient diligence, they will be able to put the past back together. Such an idea has persisted longer in the history of religions than in other fields, largely due to the nature of religious truth claims. The natural next move away from logical positivism, that is from trying to reconstruct an objective “past,” is to start looking at the construction of “history.”

BYU ScholarsArchive Citation

Taysom, Stephen C. (2022) "Review: Steven C. Harper. First Vision: Memory and Mormon Origins. New York: Oxford University Press, 2019.," Mormon Studies Review: Vol. 9: No. 1, Article 22.
Available at: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/msr2/vol9/iss1/22