Joel Marcus: Neither a Deity Masquerading as Human nor Divinized at the Transfiguration

Joel Marcus, Mark 8-16: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, The Anchor Yale Bible (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009), 1117-1118.

There is no indication within the Markan story…that Jesus is merely masquerading as a human being, as gods and angels do in Greco-Roman epiphany stories; the Markan Jesus’ total participation in the human condition, culminating in his painful and even despairing death, seem to exclude such a possibility. Similarly, it is unlikely that 9:2-8 is the moment at which Jesus is divinized within the Gospel, as in Apuleius’ description of Lucius’ initiation; in the transfiguration Jesus is showing what he already is (cf. 1:11) rather than becoming something he was not before….