How could be that nothing contains space? If the scientists are to be believed time had a beginning earlier than anything.It was nothing and time was non-existent, it is that we tie time to the fabric of space. If there is space, there is time. Now nothing had no space thus there was no time. It is like saying the real numbers 1, 2,3… and so on exist but there was moment when 1 could not exist since there was no space. The 1 is an abstraction of time itself which has nothing to do with space so it could exist prior to any space. For time we could say it is a numerical order that has nothing to do with any relation to any events happening. So time could occur without space and the number 2 only means that it exists prior to the numerical order in time. That means for events 1,2 and 3, 2 though occurs after 1 was present prior to occurring in the future cone of time.
It is a possibility that one dimension of time is ever existent like a series of real numbers which doesn’t require any space.But then time is not for correlating events as which has happened before but is the abstraction through which events could unfold in spacetime continuum and without space it could abstract nothing but abstraction itself when the abstraction is pure without having an instance in space.