Word: firstborn
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When Kim Il Sung's firstborn son came into the world on Feb. 16, 1942, he was given the Korean name Jong Il. He was also called Yura, which is Russian. After all, he was born in Khabarovsk, in the Soviet Far East. North Korean mythographers prefer to obscure that unpatriotic nativity, claiming that their Dear Leader first saw light on sacred Mount Paektu -- the site, according to legend, where Korean civilization sprang into existence 5,500 years ago. Such official obfuscations have ensured that Kim Jong Il remains mostly myth himself, even as he succeeds his father and becomes...
...David -- is retrospective mythmaking by writers who had "already decided on the transcendental importance of the adult Jesus," Crossan says. The journey to Bethlehem from Nazareth, he adds, is "pure fiction, a creation of Luke's own imagination." He speculates that Jesus may not even have been Mary's firstborn and that the man the Bible calls his brother James was the eldest child. Crossan argues that Jesus did not cure anyone but that he did "heal" people by refusing to ostracize them because of their illnesses...
...leap of faith into the unknown proves that history, of which the Holy Land has a surfeit, at long last is losing its death grip on them. For nearly 100 years, Jews and Arabs have been like Jacob and Esau, battling in the womb for the rights of the firstborn in their ancient motherland. The accommodation they announced last week, though still very rough and capable of igniting bonfires of violence among opponents of compromise, had one transcendent merit. A deal negotiated in secret by foes who had chosen to meet face to face signaled that they could lay aside...
...assailants were black, which has triggered a racism she alternately vents and recoils from. Her companion, seemingly prim, is given a deeply pragmatic and adaptive grasp of life by Frances Sternhagen in a performance as fine as any in her long career. This woman also lost a child, her firstborn, in an accident. For decades she has told no one, not even her other children, and she cannot bring herself to tell Caldwell's character at the moment when it would most comfort both of them. She does at last acknowledge the undiagnosed lump growing in her breast...
...spoiled. His mother Zelma had a miscarriage prior to his birth; the baby who came after him died eight hours after being born. His brother Kenneth was born a decade later. So Wynn, a child his mother describes as precocious and sometimes devilish, was not just an ordinary firstborn: he was a sacred child. Meanwhile his father, Michael, was often away from their home in Utica, New York, supervising bingo parlors he owned in three states. "Steve ruled the roost," says Wynn's wife Elaine. "Mike was not home, meaning that there was no paternal supervision. Zelma was a pussycat...