Jesus said in a loud voice is literally “but (Greek de) Jesus cried out and said.” Here the words “and said” reflect a kind of Semitic redundancy, serving as the equivalent of quotation marks in contemporary English. New American Bible translates “Jesus proclaimed aloud,” while New English Bible has “So Jesus cried aloud,” and Jerusalem Bible “Jesus declared publicly.”

Whoever believes in me is in Greek a participial construction (note Revised Standard Version “He who believes in me”). It is equivalent in English to an indefinite relative followed by a noun (whoever believes). Him who sent me is obviously a reference to God the Father. A basic theme of John’s Gospel is that Jesus comes from God, and that one’s reaction towards Jesus is the same as one’s reaction towards God. As elsewhere, the indefinite relative clause may be rendered as a conditional, for example, “If anyone believes in me, he believes not only in me….”

Believes not only in me but also in him who sent me is literally “believes not in me but in him who sent me” (Revised Standard Version). However, a literal translation sounds as if the person is actually not believing in Jesus, but believing only in God, a meaning clearly not intended. New American Bible translates “believes not so much in me as in him who sent me”; and Anchor “is actually believing, not in me, but in Him who sent me.” Phillips translates “Every man who believes in me is believing in the one who sent me.” Because of the possible misinterpretation in some languages of the contrast in not only … but also, this expression may be rendered “he believes both in me and in him who sent me.” In some languages the order of the clauses is best inverted in order to provide the appropriate emphasis, for example, “he believes in him who sent me as well as believing in me.” The fact that belief is both in Jesus and in God is emphasized and made clear by verse 45, which is semantically parallel to verse 44.

Quoted with permission from Newman, Barclay M. and Nida, Eugene A. A Handbook on the Gospel of John. (UBS Handbook Series). New York: UBS, 1980. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .