Knees
KNEES
KNEES . The knees have long been closely associated with religious attitudes of penitence, prayer, surrender, and humility. In the Near East since ancient times kneeling has sometimes been connected with prostration; Islam developed full prostration as the climax of a cycle of postures that includes a combined sitting and kneeling position. In ancient Israel, people considered the knees to be associated with the generation of new life and with adoption; thus Bilhah, Rachel's maidservant, bore a child on Jacob's knees (Gn. 30:3), for a baby born on a man's knees in biblical times and places was considered legally to be his child. There may be a reflection or survival here of a prehistoric notion of an intimate relationship between the knees and the reproductive process (Onians, 1951, pp. 174–180).
In ancient Rome, adoration at sacred temples included falling to the knees as well as kneeling during supplication and prayer. Romans also knelt when presenting pleas before earthly authorities. In ancient Greece, only women and children knelt before deities. The early Christians practiced kneeling, according to accounts given in the New Testament, and the posture appears to have been inherited directly from earlier Jewish practice. In the Hebrew scriptures, Solomon, Ezra, and Daniel are reported to have knelt at prayer (1 Kgs. 8:54, Ezr. 9:5, Dn. 6:10). It is likely that the ancient Israelites adopted kneeling as a religious posture from other Near Eastern peoples. Buddhists also kneel, when paying respects at sacred sites, for example.
Kneeling is not the only prayer posture mentioned in the Bible. Standing in prayer is recorded as well (1 Sm. 1:26, Mk. 11:25, Lk. 22:41). In fact, only once in the Gospels is Christ reported to have knelt, namely, on the Mount of Olives before his arrest (Lk. 22:41). But the Acts of the Apostles depicts both Peter and Paul kneeling in prayer (9:40, 20:36, 21:5), and Paul's great kenotic Christological passage in the Letter to the Ephesians ends with this declaration: "In honor of the name of Jesus all beings in heaven, and on earth, and in the world below will fall on their knees, and all will openly proclaim that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father" (2:10–11). The penitential aspect of kneeling was noted in the fourth century by Ambrose: "The knee is made flexible by which the offence of the Lord is mitigated, wrath appeased, grace called forth" (Hexaemeron 6.9.74.287).
The early Christians appear to have practiced both standing and kneeling at prayer. Later the Roman Catholic church appears to have encouraged standing for prayer, especially in Sunday congregational worship, but recommended kneeling for penitential and private prayer. Protestantism has emphasized kneeling as the prayer posture above all others, whereas Catholicism has regulated the postures of worship and prayer fairly rigorously, for example prescribing standing on Sundays and festival days and in praise and thanksgiving at all times. During Low Mass, the worshipers kneel except during the reading of the gospel.
Popular Christianity employs a kneeling posture for both supererogatory prayer and adoration. These practices sometimes extend to rather arduous ascending of stairs of shrines on the knees while uttering pious formulas at each step, as at Saint Joseph's Oratory in Montreal, where many supplicants have been healed of crippling afflictions. Cured persons have long left their crutches at this shrine, displayed in the sanctuary like sacred relics. Within the precincts of the Shrine of the Virgin of Guadalupe in Mexico City many pilgrims can be seen approaching the sacred places on their knees. Similar practices can be observed at other Christian holy places in both the Old World and the New.
Kneeling has been practiced not only in the presence of God but also in the presence of royalty in many cultures. The early Roman rulers required the northern Europeans, the Egyptians, and Asian peoples to bend the knee in submission, whereas earlier still Alexander the Great required it of all, declaring himself to be divine. When making supplication, ancient Greeks and Romans are reported to have knelt while kissing the hand of the superior person, at the same time touching his left knee with the left hand. Modern British subjects curtsy and bend the knee when in the presence of their sovereign.
Extreme flexing of the knees was once entailed in the binding of corpses for burial in a fetal position, as has been reported in ethnographical accounts and in reports on prehistoric burials. The reasons are unclear, as it is not certain whether the bent knees were especially significant in themselves. Certainly the corpse's submissive incapacity can at least be conjectured from this position, whether in order to prevent the spirit of the deceased from wandering about and haunting the living or to prepare the deceased for initiation into the secrets of the afterlife, which might possibly have included a ritual symbolism of returning to the fetal position.
Bibliography
A. E. Crawley's article entitled "Kneeling," in the Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, edited by James Hastings, vol. 7 (Edinburgh, 1914), is a useful source for Near Eastern, biblical, and Christian kneeling practices; the evolutionary perspective from which the topic is addressed must be rejected, however. For a convenient reference work, consult Betty J. Bäuml and Franz H. Bäuml's A Dictionary of Gestures (Metuchen, N.J., 1975); here are found numerous documented reports about knee symbolism and kneeling in the ancient Near East and Mediterranean world as well as in later European history and literature. For stimulating insights and observations on the knees and other parts of the body, see Richard B. Onians's The Origins of European Thought about the Body, the Mind, the Soul, the World, Time, and Fate (Cambridge, U.K., 1951).
Frederick Mathewson Denny (1987)