Laudator Temporis Acti

R.P. Martin, Carmen Christi: Philippians ii.5-11 in Recent Interpretation and in the Setting of Early Christian Worship (Cambridge: At the University Press, 1967; rpt. 2005), pp. 264-265, n. 3:

The bending of the knee is an expression of the greatest reverence and submission. It is a posture which is often found in the oriental world where genuflection marks the humble approach of a worshipper who feels his need so keenly that he cannot stand erect before God. In contrast, the Hellenistic worshipper holds a free and upright posture (so Lohmeyer, Kyrios Jesus, p. 59). But it is doubtful if Lohmeyer's distinction should be accepted. Judaism knew both postures (Strack-Billerbeck, op. cit. II, 260 f.). The usual position was that standing (S.-B. IV, 227 f., 230 b) as in the Old Testament, e.g. Jer. xviii.20 and I Kings xviii.15, xvii.1, etc. But in cases of special need and extremity the suppliant falls upon his knees (e.g. Ezra ix.5, 15; III Macc. ii.1—prayer in time of distress). But there are other references which show how kneeling was thought of as the proper attitude to God: Ps. xcv.6; Dan. vi.10; I Esdras ix.47; cf. Eusebius, H.E. V, v, 1: 'kneeled on the ground as is our familiar custom in prayer'. In the Gospels, men are described as standing for prayer: Luke xviii.11, 13 (the publican as well as the Pharisee); and Jesus assumes that His disciples will stand (cf. Matt. vi.5).

The contrast seems to be not between oriental and Greek habits and attitudes, but between the saying of prayers as a religious duty and the prostrating of the suppliant, in an acute sense of need and urgent pleading, before God. Thus Jesus who expects His followers to stand and pray (Mark xi.25) and who Himself normally stood (John xi.41, xvii.1: except in Luke's Gospel where Jesus kneels in prayer) bows down in lowly submission and distress in the Gethsemane prayer (Mark xiv.35; Matt. xxvi.39; Luke xxii.41). This distinction is strikingly confirmed by what André Parrot says in his essay on 'Gestures of Prayer in the Mesopotamian World' (Maqqél Shâdqédh: La Branche d'Amandier. Hommage à Wilhelm Vischer, ed. J. Cadier (1960), pp. 177-80) that out of thousands of representations of men at prayer only four or five iconographs show the suppliants kneeling. The vast majority depict the worshipper standing or seated.

As an aid to the exegesis of Phil. ii.10 we may conclude that kneeling in prayer is a mark of extreme abasement and submission (as in Eph. iii.14) and denotes that the universal homage marks the subjection of those who so kneel to the lordship of Christ.

It could be suggested that kneeling for prayer is a mark of Gentile Christianity if one could safely build on the assumptions that Luke (or the auctor ad Theophilum) who shows a preference for this posture in the third Gospel and the Acts (see Luke xxii.41 ff.; Acts vii.60, ix.40, xx.36, xxi.5) represents Gentile Christian practice in this matter; and that I Cor. xiv.25; Ephesians iii.14 also indicate the prayer habit of a Gentile believer. It may then be permissible to say that the allusion in the Christ-hymn to the bowing of the knee reflects its origin in a Hellenistic Christian community in which this custom was practised. But this is speculative. Cf. Delling, Der Gottesdienst, pp. 106 f.

Later Church practice is mentioned by C.F.D. Moule, Worship, p. 66: 'Perhaps bowing, kneeling, and prostration were in those days signs of special humility, intensity or anxiety.' We may add to his ref. to Origen, Tertullian, de Orat. XXIII; Apol. XXX; and for kneeling only on fast days, de Corona, III.

See also H.W. Pleket, "Religious History as the History of Mentality: The 'Believer' as Servant of the Deity in the Greek World," in H.S. Versnel, ed., Faith, Hope and Worship: Aspects of Religious Mentality in the Ancient World (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1981), pp. 152-192 (at 156-157), and H.S. Versnel, Coping with the Gods: Wayward Readings in Greek Theology (Leiden: Brill, 2011 = Religions in the Graeco-Roman World, 173), pp. 411-412.