Abraham was considered to be the father of the Jewish faith. In Genesis chapter eleven verse thirty one we learn that Terah, the father of Abram (Abraham) took Abram out of Ur of the Chaldeans. The city of Ur is located in lower Babylonia the land governed by the ruler of Babylon. We don't know how old Abram was when he left Ur, but we do know he was old enough to have taken a wife (v. 31). Terah moves up the Euphrates River and takes Abram to the Assyrian city of Haran. Abram stays with his father until he dies; Abram is seventy five years old at the death of his father (Gen. 12:4). In the book of Joshua we find that Terah, Abraham and Nahor worshipped other gods (Joshua 24:2) prior to the time Abraham crossed the Euphrates River. (1) From this we can surmise that Abraham grew up having learned Babylonian mythology.

When we begin to understand that Abraham was greatly influenced by ancient Babylonian lore, we can begin to understand where the stories in Genesis originated. Through the repetitious process of retelling their stories they were gradually altered from their original format and in the course of time the stories were told entirely different, though the same principle truth was related.

Moses is accredited for having written the first five books of the Bible known as the Pentateuch (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy). Moses of course, was a descendant of Abraham by at least four hundred years and related the creation as he understood it to have taken place.

Writing doesn't appear in Assyrian archaeology until about 3000 BCE. In Arabic communities there still exists to this day people employed to memorize family genealogies. These methods are not the most accurate; if you were to memorize several thousand generations of names you would not trouble yourself to mention every single name, since many individuals would only bring shame to the name; therefore, only the most important people are remembered.  An example of this would be found in comparing the genealogy of Ezra found in Ezra 7:1-5 and the genealogy of the same priest in the book of Chronicles, Chronicles 6:3-15.  Chronicles lists 23 generations between Aaron and Jehozadak, who went into captivity when Nebuchadnezzar invaded Judea.  Ezra was a priest after the seventy years captivity and he only listed seventeen generations between Aaron and himself.  Ezra, therefore obviously omitted several names in his recollection of the genealogy.  With this in mind it becomes easy to understand that gaps in Biblical genealogy and expanses in time do exist; to try to trace the descendants of mankind to Adam and Eve would be preposterous. So in considering the creation, and the common Christian view of a six day creation, one must also consider these gaps in genealogies; biblical scholars refer to genealogies for the support of their data.

To the Jews, Abraham is recognized as the first man to believe in a single divine and ruling deity.  Zoraster was an ancient Iranian priest who also believed in a single deity, Ahura Mazda (though his rituals were quite different).(2) The life of Zoraster can not be accurately determined due to the lack of sufficient documentation, but most conservative scholars place his life to have been between 700 and 600 BCE., about a thousand years after the life of Abraham.