23. And as to those remarkable evidences they show of all the persecutions and cruelties they have endured according to the scriptures in the service of the suffering Messiah, I too bring forward the catalogue of my afflictions, and boldly claim a more excessive degree of martyrdom than they, more labours than they (I speak as a fool), more imprisonments, more blows, more hair-breadth escapes than they.
24. Have I not been five times scourged by the Jews? That is more often than any of them.
25. Have I not been thrice scourged by the Romans? Yes, and I have been stoned once, shipwrecked thrice, passed twenty-four hours in the open sea at the mercy of the waves.
26-28. I have journeyed far afield, and the dangers I might enumerate would far out-distance the adventures they have suffered. In the field or the city, by land or by sea, by river or in the haunts of brigands I have run countless risks, and at the hands of my own nation, or amongst foreign nations and cities, at the hands of false brethren too and traitors, I have passed through grave trials. Oh I have been an apostle above measure! What signs of martyrdom and crucifixion that they produce can I not parallel from my own experience, and indeed outmatch and vanquish altogether — in watchings, hunger, thirst, fasting, cold and nakedness; not to mention this daily anxiety for all the churches.
29. For where they are weak, I too become weak; and where traps and pitfalls, snares and stumbling-blocks are placed in their way, so unquestionably I myself, Paul, must burn with indignation and shame.