Time-travel specs: What did it mean to the first readers?

I’ve admitted before that I’m something of a sci-fi geek, which may be why we made our own time machine to use at our annual holiday club. Children and leaders were “Time Travellers”, entering the time machine to visit whichever Bible events we were exploring that year. (I also made the head of a giant fish once, so that everyone arriving at our Jonah holiday club had to walk through the jaws when they arrived - same idea as the time machine, but a bit more limited in which events we could explore!)

Children love the idea of time travel, but its value doesn’t end there. When we read the Bible in 2014, almost every event (bar the odd bit of prophecy) happened at least 2000 years ago. So that’s where the time-travel specs come in*.

Again, we can approach this by asking questions:

• When Jesus calmed the storm, what were the boats like? And what kinds of clothing would he and the disciples have been wearing?
• What was Egyptian culture like at the time of Moses? (A visit to see Egyptian artefacts at a museum can be a great help in reinforcing that these events happened to real people at a real time in history.)
• What was Babylon like at the time of Nebuchadnezzar? Does this help explain his arrogant claim in Daniel 4 v 29-30?
• What were the rights and benefits of Roman citizenship? How did Paul use this to his advantage in Acts 16 v 37-40 (the arrest of Paul and Silas)? And does it add an extra layer to our understanding of his insistence that “our citizenship is in heaven” (Philippians 4 v 20)?

The time-travel specs also help us put ourselves in the shoes (or sandals!) of people at the time. For example, the crowd of 5000 men (plus women and children) in John 6 were Jewish. That means they learned whole chunks of the Old Testament when they were children - including the account of God rescuing his people from Egypt, and then feeding them manna and quail in the wilderness (Exodus 16).

So imagine going back in time and being part of that huge Jewish crowd. Think about getting so very hungry in the middle of nowhere; and then watching Jesus feed everyone from almost nothing. What event would that instantly bring to mind? And what would that show about Jesus’ identity? You can grasp the big idea in John 6 without understanding this Jewish background; but the time-travel specs help add an extra layer to that understanding, and particularly to the response of the crowd in John 6 v 14-15.

So, we now have three pairs of glasses perched on our noses - but there are two more to go. Next up: the heart-shaped specs.

*The meaning of a Bible passage or event today won’t contradict what it meant then (a truth about God 4000 years ago is a truth about God now), so it’s important to know what any passage would have meant to people at the time. (It will never mean less than this, though the cross-shaped specs may mean it now means more.)