2. “I think myself happy, King Agrippa, that I am to make my defense before you today concerning all the things that I am accused by the Judeans,
3. especially because you are expert in all customs and questions which are among Jews. Therefore I beg you to hear me patiently.
4. “Indeed, all Jews know my way of life from my youth up, which was from the beginning among my own nation and at Jerusalem;
5. having known me from the first, if they are willing to testify, that after the strictest sect of our religion I lived a Pharisee.
6. Now I stand here to be judged for the hope of the promise made by God to our fathers,
7. which our twelve tribes, earnestly serving night and day, hope to attain. Concerning this hope I am accused by the Judeans, King Agrippa!
8. Why 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 Yeshua of Nazareth.
10. I also did this in Jerusalem. I both shut up many of the holy ones in prisons, having received authority from the chief priests, and when they were put to death I gave my vote against them.
11. Punishing 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,
13. at noon, O king, I saw on the way a light from the sky, brighter than the sun, shining around me and those who traveled with me.
14. When we had all fallen to the earth, I heard a voice saying to me in the Hebrew language, ‘Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? It is hard for you to kick against the goads.’
15. “I said, ‘Who are you, Lord?’“He said, ‘I am Yeshua, whom you are persecuting.