The Taheb, the Restorer Who Is to Come

Samaritan tradition does not describe the Taheb in a single settled shape. Some sources give him a defined reign, generally reckoned at a few decades, after which he dies, a detail that separates the figure sharply from a messiah understood to reign without end. Other Samaritan sources describe his coming mainly in terms of function rather than duration, restoring the tabernacle and its vessels, which Samaritan belief holds have been hidden since the community's founding rift with the sanctuary later established at Jerusalem, and returning right worship to Mount Gerizim, the site Samaritan tradition holds was always the intended one.

Outside observers noticed the expectation early. References to a Samaritan hope for a coming prophet or restorer appear in ancient reports of the community's belief, which is unusual for the eschatology of a group whose surviving population never numbered more than a modest fraction of ancient Judea's, and the persistence of the Taheb in the liturgy of a community that today lives in only two locations, Kiryat Luza on Mount Gerizim and Holon, shows an expectation kept alive across a documented span of roughly two thousand years rather than a recent theological addition to Samaritan practice.