The supreme priest knows this, and so do the other respected men who belong to our Jewish Council. They gave me letters to take to their fellow Jews in Damascus city. By means of those letters, they authorized me to go to there and find people who believed in Jesus. They had written in the letters that I was to bring those people as prisoners to Jerusalem, so that they would be punished here {the leaders here could punish them}. So I went on my way to Damascus.