Search results for "Firstborn"
showing 3 items of 3 documents
Orphaned siblings and noble families in baroque Rome
2010
The essay investigates the impact of the premature death of the father on brother and sister groups in noble Roman families of the seventeenth century. More specifically, it explores how this loss reflected on the biographical itineraries of individual members of the sibling unit; how adelphic relations between the orphans were reformulated according to order of birth and first born or cadet status, age, and sex; and what forms of solidarity and competition were engendered by the loss of a father. Since demographic historians have shown that orphanage at an early age is an important variable, the author argues that it cannot be overlooked – as historians have done so far – in studies on fam…
The Firstborn of Death: Monotheism and the Mythology of Death in Job 18
2019
AbstractJob 18 depicts the destruction of the wicked as a kind of ambush by “the firstborn of death.” Much of the discussion of this passage has centered on this figure’s identification, and whether one should look primarily to Ugaritic or Mesopotamian mythological traditions for its background. Yet the passage as a whole concludes with a reference to a single “God,” knowledge of whom is determinative for human fate. This raises a basic question concerning the relation between “God” and the “firstborn of death.” Through a close comparison with the Ugaritic Baal Cycle and the Neo-Assyrian Underworld Vision on the one hand, and Job 5 and Deuteronomy 32 on the other, this paper argues that “th…
Does the sex of firstborn children influence subsequent fertility behavior? evidence from family reconstitution.
2006
According to recent studies in evolutionary anthropology, firstborn daughters influence both parity progression and sibling survival by acting as so-called helpers at the nest. Based on 534 sets of household data from family reconstitution, the current analysis fails to show that offspring sex had any direct impact on maternal fertility, sibling survivorship, birth spacing, or reproductive span. Instead, the results indicate that fertility decisions were heavily affected by proximate factors such as child mortality and gender preferences. Families who had experienced child death were swift to substitute the loss with another pregnancy—a phenomenon known as replacement strategy. Similarly, …