Acts 26

¹Agrippa said to Paul, “You may speak for yourself.” Then Paul stretched out his hand, and made his defense.

²“I think myself happy, King Agrippa, that I am to make my defense before you today concerning all the things the Jews accuse me of,

³especially because you are expert in all customs and questions which are among the Jews. Therefore I beg you to hear me patiently.

⁴“Indeed, all the Jews know my way of life from my youth up, which was from the beginning among my own nation and at Jerusalem;

⁵having known me from the first, if they are willing to testify, that after the strictest sect of our religion I lived a Pharisee.

⁶Now I stand here to be judged for the hope of the promise made by God to our fathers,

⁷which our twelve tribes, earnestly serving night and day, hope to attain. Concerning this hope I am accused by the Jews, King Agrippa!

⁸Why is it judged incredible with you if God does raise the dead?

⁹“I myself most certainly thought that I ought to do many things contrary to the name of Jesus of Nazareth.

¹⁰I also did this in Jerusalem. I both shut up many of the saints in prisons, having received authority from the chief priests; and when they were put to death I gave my vote against them.

¹¹Punishing them often in all the synagogues, I tried to make them blaspheme. Being exceedingly enraged against them, I persecuted them even to foreign cities.

¹²“Whereupon as I traveled to Damascus with the authority and commission from the chief priests,