It’s differences like this that I think get downplayed in the harmonization and is why I dislike harmonization. But at the same time I don’t see it as a huge difference.

“by searching the scriptures I found that mand did not come unto the Lord but that they had apostatised from the true and liveing faith and there was no society or denomination that built upon the gospel of Jesus Christ as recorded in the new testament”

I have not found any satisfactory “harmonization” of this conflict, though one can be attempted by distinguishing what was in Joseph’s mind as a result of searching the scriptures from what had entered into his heart. That seems weak to me. Is there a better solution? I suspect natural memory modification as an explanation of the different accounts, but that preserves honesty at the expense of accuracy (which BTW is OK with me).

Good thing reality is not an undergraduate history essay.

The contradiction among the versions interesting to me is not the one or two beings issue (which may or may not be a contradiction). The two personage canonized version is now frequently cited in defense of anti-trinitarianism, but is not needed, in view of Stephen’s vision recorded in the New Testament. (Though some anti-trinitarians who are strict mono-theists simply deny that Stephen saw two distinct beings and others deny that Jesus was God/a God. I don’t know what trinitarians do with Stephen’s vision.) What might be foundationally more significant than the appearance of a second being, who only introduces the first, is the fact that in the first, handwritten version of the vision, JS did not pray to find out which church to join or which was right. He had already determined that none were. Instead, he went to pray for forgiveness of his own sins. The canonized version changes fundamentally the nature and content of the prayer and the response by making them a matter of seeking information as to what to do/which church to join, rather than relief from the burden of guilt. I have not grasped what various harmonizers are doing with this contradiction or what the critics of contradictions are doing when they focus on numbers of personages rather than the basic content of the prayer and the response.

Could JS have been describing two very different events? Maybe there was a first vision and a second vision that have been assumed to be the same, but were different responses to different prayers. Maybe memory changed. Memory research in the last few decades has shown that it does that and that a revised (or implanted) memory may bear no relationship to actual historical events, but have the same emotional/psychological/reality for the person as any memory of actual events. This could lead to an authentic voice of conviction in an account that has little or no correspondence to historical reality.