Deuteronomy may well be the first book to pose the problem of modernity. Its authors struggled with issues conventionally viewed as exclusively modern ones, such as the his­torical distance between past and present, the tension between tradition and the needs of the contemporary generation, and the distinction between divine revelation and human interpretation. The religious conviction that God made a covenant with Israel at Sinai and that the Torah embodies the terms of that covenant originates with Deuteronomy.