Sara, Abramo. Agar: figure di un'arte maieutica

I try to offer a fresh reading of Philo's theme of the two kinds of wisdom, the perfect one (represented by Sarah) and the intermediate, or encyclical culture (represented by Hagar), in the face of analogous representations in Greek philosophy. The paper is not intended as retracing the history of the notion of enkyklios paideia, in general terms nor in Philo's vision, since this history has been sufficiently reconstructed from a both philological and conceptual point of view. My goal is, more modestly, to redefine some original characters of Philo's exegesis of Gen:16,1-6 in the first part of De congressu eruditionis gratia. The conclusion that will be drawn from this survey will be the proposal to see, against the background of this particular Philo exegesis, not only the trace of canonical Penelope's and her servants' similitude, but also and preferably the Platonic metaphors of knowledge as 'erotic' experience and, above all, as a process of 'soul's labor' similar to childbirth.