Good to have clarity on the following:
1) Do I love it because it’s familiar?
2) Does it need to be authentic in the sense that it’s original?
3) At what point does an editor become an editorializer?
4)… and is that “bad?”

I’d suggest going ahead with Jeremiah Ingalls‘ The Christian Harmony (1805) version. Why not? After all, you get a layer of authenticity since tunes and text were not nearly as firmly wed together in Olde America. And that, in itself, is also authentic.