THIS MIGHT SURPRISE YOU
The answer
In the Bible: Mark 16:17–18, part of the "longer ending" of Mark. Those twelve verses (16:9–20) are missing from the oldest substantially complete manuscripts, Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus, and modern Bibles bracket or footnote them — so the snake promise sits inside the New Testament's most famous disputed ending.
Why it’s interesting
These are the verses behind the serpent-handling churches of Appalachia — a living tradition resting on a passage the earliest manuscripts don't include. Whether Mark's original ending was lost or 16:8 was the intended stop is still argued.
Scholarly consensus
You can know the Bible.
Not just the stories, but the history, authorship, and scholarship behind it.