3. because you are especially familiar with all the customs and controversial issues of the Jews. Therefore I ask you to listen to me patiently.
4. Now all the Jews know the way I lived from my youth, spending my life from the beginning among my own people and in Jerusalem.
5. They know, because they have known me from time past, if they are willing to testify, that according to the strictest party of our religion, I lived as a Pharisee.
6. And now I stand here on trial because of my hope in the promise made by God to our ancestors,
7. a promise that our twelve tribes hope to attain as they earnestly serve God night and day. Concerning this hope the Jews are accusing me, Your Majesty!
8. Why do you people think it is unbelievable that God raises the dead?
9. Of course, I myself was convinced that it was necessary to do many things hostile to the name of Jesus the Nazarene.
10. And that is what I did in Jerusalem: Not only did I lock up many of the saints in prisons by the authority I received from the chief priests, but I also cast my vote against them when they were sentenced to death.
11. I punished them often in all the synagogues and tried to force them to blaspheme. Because I was so furiously enraged at them, I went to persecute them even in foreign cities.
12. “While doing this very thing, as I was going to Damascus with authority and complete power from the chief priests,
13. about noon along the road, Your Majesty, I saw a light from heaven, brighter than the sun, shining everywhere around me and those traveling with me.