3. particularly since you know so well all the Jewish customs and disputes. I ask you, then, to listen to me with patience.
4. “All the Jews know how I have lived ever since I was young. They know how I have spent my whole life, at first in my own country and then in Jerusalem.
5. They have always known, if they are willing to testify, that from the very first I have lived as a member of the strictest party of our religion, the Pharisees.
6. And now I stand here to be tried because of the hope I have in the promise that God made to our ancestors —
7. the very thing that the twelve tribes of our people hope to receive, as they worship God day and night. And it is because of this hope, Your Majesty, that I am being accused by these Jews!
8. Why do you who are here find it impossible to believe that God raises the dead?
9. “I myself thought that I should do everything I could against the cause of Jesus of Nazareth.
10. That is what I did in Jerusalem. I received authority from the chief priests and put many of God's people in prison; and when they were sentenced to death, I also voted against them.
11. Many times I had them punished in the synagogues and tried to make them deny their faith. I was so furious with them that I even went to foreign cities to persecute them.
12. “It was for this purpose that I went to Damascus with authority and orders from the chief priests.