That's not how "unappropriated" works. If you "unappropriate" something, you stop using it. While continue to use it, you are still appropriating it. And again, your timeline is wrong; even Paizo concedes that the 3E box was clearly referencing the religious item. Acting like it doesn't misses that the people using it clearly thought otherwise.
This is a weak argument. That's only for one setting and isn't even mentioned in the 5E MM, where it's expressly said that they have to feed souls into their phylacteries to continue to live.
Thats again a huge double standard, claiming on one side that language shifts and that needs to be accepted and on the other that even after 2 decades the meaning is still the same and has not changed. (But on the other (third?) hand the original meaning of protective amulet doesn't apply because, surprise, the language changes...)
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