(urth) "Sci-Fi’s Difficult Genius", Peter Bebergal

[David Stockhoff]

Could well be. I might have guessed "Hebrew propaganda" but only out of 
cynicism, not out of any actual knowledge.

On 4/25/2015 8:58 PM, Jeffery Wilson clueland.com wrote:
> On 4/24/2015 3:08 PM, Dan'l Danehy-Oakes wrote:
>> I've always wondered about that phrase, "unwashed Philistines." Is there
>> any reason to believe that Philistines bathed less frequently than their
>> neighbors?
>>
>> Inquiring minds want to know.
>
> I believe it is a compound insult, drawing from Bulwer-Lytton's "the 
> great unwashed" and the secondary sense of unrefined and uneducated 
> that arose from a minister's metephorical use of "the Philistines are 
> upon us" during a time of bad sentiment between the townsfolk and the 
> scholars of Johannesburg a couple centuries ago.
>
>