The number is seventy in manuscripts in the Alexandrian (such as Codex Sinaiticus) and Caesarean text traditions but seventy two in most other Alexandrian and Western texts.

It is based on the older Alexandrian or Coptic calendar, which in turn derives from the Egyptian calendar.

Now a certain Jew named Apollos, an Alexandrian by race, an eloquent man, came to Ephesus. He was mighty in the Scriptures.

Another calculation had been developed by the Alexandrian monk Annianus around the year AD 400, placing the Annunciation on 25 March AD 9 (Julian) eight to ten years after the date that Dionysius was to imply.