[26:1] Agrippa said to Paul, “You have permission to speak on your own behalf.” Paul stretched out his hand and defended himself as follows:
[26:2] “King Agrippa! I consider myself fortunate that today I am to defend myself before you from all the things these Jews accuse me of,
[26:3] particularly since you know so well all the Jewish customs and disputes. I ask you, then, to listen to me with patience.
[26:4] “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.
[26:5] 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.
[26:6] And now I stand here to be tried because of the hope I have in the promise that God made to our ancestors—
[26:7] 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!
[26:8] Why do you who are here find it impossible to believe that God raises the dead?
[26:9] “I myself thought that I should do everything I could against the cause of Jesus of Nazareth.
[26:10] 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.
[26:11] 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.