Kneeling with clasped hands may have come from feudal homage, not scripture
Early Christians prayed standing, gazing upward with arms spread wide, much as their pagan neighbours did. The familiar pose of kneeling with hands pressed together seems to have arrived only in the high Middle Ages, probably borrowed from the gesture a vassal made when pledging loyalty to a lord.
Prayer is deliberate communication meant to build a connection with whatever is worshipped. Narrowly it means asking a deity or deified ancestor for help, for oneself or others, but it also covers thanks and praise, and comparative religion places it close to meditation and even to charms and spells. It may be a hymn, a creed, an incantation or words blurted out on the spot, said alone or together.
Written evidence reaches back around five thousand years. The Kesh temple hymn, dated to roughly the 26th century BC, is liturgy addressed to gods, and Egypt's Pyramid Texts from a similar era hold spells aimed at deities. Anthropologists Edward Burnett Tylor and James George Frazer argued that prayer in its loosest form may be a human universal dating to the dawn of modern behaviour. Some ancient prayers outlived understanding: Roman augurs kept using Etruscan formulas after the language died, and the Carmen Arvale seems to have baffled even the scribes copying it.
Bodies take part too. Some Christians bow and fold their hands, Jewish worshippers may sway, Muslims bow, kneel and prostrate, certain Sufis whirl, and some Native Americans treat dance as prayer. Other companions include candles, incense, bells, anointing oil, fasting and facing Mecca or the East. In Shinto, requests to the kami are often written on small wooden tablets called ema, and the English word itself traces to Medieval Latin precaria, a petition.
Does it work as medicine? Scientists have mostly tested prayer's effect on healing the sick or injured, and results conflict. Many well-controlled trials found no benefit, and a few hinted at worse outcomes. Within theology, Friedrich Heiler sorted prayer into six kinds, from primitive and ritual through philosophical and mystical to prophetic, while Catholic writers separate meditation, which uses reason, from contemplation, which uses imagination.
Source: Prayer
