Archaic verb form "bare", its semantics

Question

In King James Bible, John 12:6 we read:

This he said, not that he cared for the poor; but because he was a thief, and had the bag, and bare what was put therein.

As said here, bare is archaic past simple form of verb "bear". But in all modern versions of this line the meaning of this phrase "and bare what was put therein" is that Judas used to pilfer what was put into it.

So the question is: what is semantics of this old form "bare" in original KJV John 12:6? Does it mean "carry" ("bare" = "carried"), or it has something similar to modern verb "bare" (="open to view")? or "carry" in sense of "carry off"?

UPD: I'm not asking about interpretation of this particular New Testament text, but about how this archaic form of verb "bear" was used and should be interpreted with direct and first reading.

Answer 1

This bare is surely an archaic past tense of v.t. bear, and OED indeed does show the form as “ME–17,” i.e., Middle English through seventeenth century; it is not a form of bare “uncover.” I have combed the OED entry for v.t. bear in vain for any sense suggesting pilferage. The ambiguity is in the Greek: the verb βαστάζω [LSJ lexicon] can mean either to lift up or carry on the one hand, or to pilfer on the other. The KJV is usually better than this at reproducing Greek ambiguities in English. A tempting translation would be lift; but perhaps lift in the sense of pilfer was rejected as slang, for the OED does so categorize it, even while dating that sense back to the sixteenth century.