Who do you mean?
I’ve been working on checking through the draft translation of Jeremiah in Kasem for some weeks now. I’ve just got to the end of chapter 41. Hebrew does like to make double sure you know who is being referred to in narrative. It’s what we call “participant tracking”. Take Gedaliah for example. We get to meet him in 39:14 as “Gedaliah son of Ahikam, the son of Shaphan”. Fair enough, since there is at least one other Gedaliah around (38:1). In chapters 40 and 41 (only 34 verses total), Gedaliah is mentioned by name 20 times. 4 of those times he is given the full works, “Gedaliah son of Ahikam, the son of Shaphan”; another 9 times it is “Gedaliah son of Ahikam”; leaving 7 occurrences of simply “Gedaliah” (and most of those are “Gedaliah at Mizpah”). Add to that the number of times his office as governor is mentioned, and it all gets a bit heavy for most languages. And Gedaliah isn’t the only one being given full-name treatment in these chapters. There’s “Ishmael son of Nethaniah, the son of Elishama”, “Johanan son of Kareah”, and “Nebuzaradan, commander of the guard”, all of which are repeated in full several times. Needless to say, Kasem prefers to keep track of participants in a more economical way. Once we know who it is, just the name will do, with maybe the occasional reminder of their role. Even a pronoun may suffice sometimes!
Okay- here’s a comment. Must be a summer for starting blogs. I started one too. A little less blatant about my interests but there http://adisasullivan.wordpress.com/