1. Agrippa 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 that I am accused by the Jews,
3. especially 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;
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 Jews, 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 Jesus of Nazareth.
10. This I also did 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.
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.