(1) Papias (Date: 110). Papias was a bishop in the city of Hierapolis in Asia Minor (in west-central Turkey). He is remembered as the author of Five Books on the Sayings of the Lord, completed by about the year 110. The remains of his writings exist today only as snippets and excerpts that were preserved by other writers. Eusebius of Caesarea, in the early 300’s, was one such writer. In Church History (Book Three, chapter 39), after mentioning that the four daughters of Philip the evangelist were said to have resided in Hierapolis, Eusebius stated, “We must now point out that Papias, who lived at the same time, relates that he had received a wonderful narrative from the daughters of Philip. For he relates that a dead man was raised to life in his day. He also mentions another miracle, regarding Justus surnamed Barsabbas: he swallowed a deadly poison, and received no harm, on account of the grace of the Lord.”

In this recollection, Eusebius does not say that Papias was using Mark 16:18, and the Greek vocabulary involved does not match the words of Mark 16:18. Nevertheless, the incident about Justus (the same individual who is mentioned in the New Testament in Acts 1:23) bears a resemblance to that passage, as if Papias was illustrating the fulfillment of the prophetic statement that if believers drink anything deadly, it will in no way hurt them.

Another later writer, Philip of Side (circa 425), mentioned the very same statement, echoing Eusebius but including details which Eusebius did not mention: “The previously-mentioned Papias recorded, as something he had heard from the daughters of Philip, that Barsabbas, who was also called Justus, drank the poison of a viper in the name of Christ when put to the test by the unbelievers, and was protected from all harm. He also records other amazing things, in particular one about Manaim’s mother, who was raised from the dead.”

Philip of Side’s version of Papias’ story appears to be based on Eusebius’ statement, but Philip is more specific about the identity of the person who was resurrected, and the kind of poison that Justus drank; he also mentions that Philip drank the viper-venom because he had been compelled by unbelievers. More significantly, Philip of Side stated that Justus had done so “in the name of Christ” (εν ονοματι του Χριστου; compare Mark 16:17, εν τω ονοματι μου).

Papias was familiar with the Gospel of Mark. In another statement which Eusebius of Caesarea preserved, Papias states that “The elder,” one of his sources, had informed him, “Mark, who had been the interpreter of Peter, accurately wrote down – but not in order – the things Peter remembered about the Lord, whether sayings or actions. For he [Mark] Mark had not heard the Lord, and had not been among his followers. But later, as I stated, Peter would adapt the teachings as necessary, but without arranging the sayings of the Lord chronologically. So Mark did not sin when he wrote things as he remembered them. For he made it a priority to omit nothing of the things he heard, and to add nothing false to them.” Considering that Peter (according to Luke in Acts 2:32-33, 3:15, and other passages) preached about Christ’s resurrection and ascension, that does not seem like a natural way to describe a text which does not describe anything that Christ did after His resurrection.

Possibly Papias mentioned the story of Justus as an example of the fulfillment of Mark 16:18’s prediction, to show that it pertained to an individual who had seen Jesus (rather than to later generations) and that the individual involved was not testing God by putting his life at risk, but instead had acted under compulsion. On the other hand, this reference can be considered, at most, only a possible allusion to Mark 16:18.

(2) Epistula Apostolorum (Date: 150. Translated and revised form: 180). The anonymous composition Epistula Apostolorum was discovered by Carl Schmidt in 1895 and was published (rather obscurely) in 1913, too late to have any effect on Westcott and Hort’s compilation of the critical text. Kirsopp Lake brought it to the attention of American scholars in 1921. Analysts have consistently identified Epistula Apostolorum as a second-century text. Originally written in Greek, it exists in three versional forms: an Ethiopic form, an earlier Coptic form (the Coptic manuscript is from the 300’s or 400’s), and a small Latin fragment (from the 400’s). In the Coptic text, Jesus is pictured stating that His second coming will occur when 120 years have past. It is unlikely that the author would have pictured Jesus saying this if 120 years from the year of His ascension had already passed. In the Ethiopic version, this number is 150 – which implies that the text was translated into Ethiopic some time after 150, but before 180.

According to Martin Hengel, M. Horschuh stated (in Studien zur Epistula Apostolorum, P.T.S. 5, 1965) that this text’s resurrection-narrative “is closest to the so-called inauthentic conclusion to Mark in respect of its structures,” and “The basic pattern of the account is thus derived from the inauthentic conclusion of Mark.”

The basis for Horschuh’s statement is subtle but substantial. There is more to consider in this witness than the reference to “mourning and weeping” which occurs in Epistula Apostolorum 1:10 (and in Mark 16:10). In a narrative portion of the text, one of the women (the name varies among the witnesses), after encountering Jesus, goes from the tomb to the disciples and reports that “the Master is risen from the dead.”

The disciples do not believe her. The only place in the Gospels where the apostles, as a group, disbelieve a woman’s report that she has seen Jesus, is Mark 16:10 to 11. The recurrence of Mark 16:11’s scene in Epistula Apostolorum is not so much a quotation as it is the perpetuation of the framework of a narrative, but it indicates that the author knew Mark 16:10 to 11 or a very similar tradition.

Epistula Apostolorum pictures the disciples saying, “We believed her not that the Saviour was risen from the dead. Then she returned unto the Lord and said unto him, ‘None of them has believed me, that you live.’” The phrase “that you live” resembles the phrase “that Jesus was alive” in Mark 16:11. The phrase “None of them has believed me” may be based on the phrase “they did not believe it” in Mark 16:11. Epistula Apostolorum’s narrative does not seem to be based on Luke 24, where the women appear to report to the apostles without personally encountering Jesus. So, while Epistula Apostolorum does not contain an explicit quotation from Mark 16:9 to 20, its structure and verbiage indicate that its author knew the text that we know as Mark 16:9 to 11.

In Epistula Apostolorum chapter 12, the apostles are pictured remembering their encounter with the risen Christ: “We touched him, that we might learn of a truth whether he were risen in the flesh; and we fell on our faces (and worshipped him) confessing our sin, that we had been unbelieving.” Some elements of this statement echo episodes in the Gospel of Luke and the Gospel of John, but the statement that the disciples, as a group, had been unbelieving, is parallelled nowhere in the Gospels except in Luke 24:11 and Mark 16:11 to 14, and Mark 16:14 stresses the apostles’ unbelief far more than Luke 24:11 does.

In Epistula Apostolorum chapter 30, Jesus is pictured saying to the apostles, “Go ye and preach unto the twelve tribes, and preach also unto the heathen, and to all the land of Israel from the east to the west and from the south unto the north, and many shall believe on <me> the Son of God.” This appears to be based on Matthew 28:19 and Mark 16:15 to 16, and John 20:31.

All in all, although Epistula Apostolorum does not contain an explicit quotation of Mark 16:9 to 20, its narrative structure and vocabulary indicates that its author was aware of the contents of that passage. Robert H. Stein, in his 2008 commentary on Mark, rejected Mark 16:9-20, but nevertheless listed Epistula Apostolorum as attestation for Mark 16:9-20.