The Sathya Sai Baba Discourse on Christmas Day, 1996
This Christmas day 'message' contained some of the greatest historical blunders and confusion that he has made about Christianity and Islam. All the most embarrassing statements were omitted by astute editor V. K. Narasimhan from the official journal Sanathana Sarathi, nor was it printed in the official version in Sathya Sai Speaks, Volume XXIX. However, in a note on page 393 it is referred to as follows:- “Bhagavan gave a brief account of the Jewish concept of the creation of the cosmos and referred to the birth of Jesus as the son of Mary and Joseph.“ The full text of the English translation of the discourse was published in an A5 size brochure by Sri Sathya Sai Towers Pvt. Ltd., and a scan of the whole pamphlet is seen below.
As an overview summary of Sai Baba's gaffes, the following direct quotations (in brown text) are from the video as simultaneously translated there by Anil Kumar:-
Sai Baba: “Three hundred and fifty years B.C., before Christ, Jews lived. However, among Jews, there were religions such as Islam and Christianity. People of that land, they are all Jews. That land is the birthplace of both the religions, Islam and Christianity. The Hebrew language was very prominent. This Hebrew language is more or less equal to our Sanskrit. …” Comment: Sai Baba attributed the schism between Catholic and Protestant to the Jews, when it was of course initiated only by Martin Luther in the 16th Century. Comment: Sai Baba speaks as if these groups actually attempted to harm the physical being, Jesus of Nazareth. The Romans certainly did, but the Catholics cannot be said to have existed until many centuries later, and Luther did not appear until the European Reformation! Comment: For once the first sentence makes a very reliable statement! Especially affiliation to Sathya Sai Baba, considering the murders in his bedroom in 1993, and many other murders and violent incidents in the ashrams or among followers. Ego leads to confusion, no doubt, but not particularly as to what Jesus said… that is a matter of lacking historical sources, questions of the authenticity of the Gospels and Apocrypha, the mistranslation of Jesus’ language (spoken in Aramaic, not Hebrew) and the editing by Church authorities and transcribers etc. |
That Discourse was captured in full by the American filmmaker James Redmond, who was for many years Sathya Sai Baba’s official videographer.At length, when the Internet made critical materials about Sathya Sai Baba commonly available, James Redmond examined his large collection of films and announced that he found many instances of Sai Baba faking materializations. James Redmond continued to sell Sathya Sai Baba videos for a considerable period after that, but eventually closed his engagement down and these videos have not been commonly available since the early 2000s. The material has also been reproduced from the video and commented wisely upon by Brian Steel , the former author of a large and accurate Sai Baba compendium published by Samuel Weiser Inc., USA. See http://bdsteel.tripod.com/More/Nonsense.htm
Scans of the Sai Towers published pamphlet with translated discours of Xmas Day 1996








