Ok,
I have an update. First of all, thanks to everyone for their thoughts.

I took a Snap on 14x1.5 tap and slowly wound it all the way into the hole and then wound it out by hand.

I then put the new wheel bolt in by hand.
Torqued it with a torque wrench.
It torqued up perfect.

Then I removed it, and then put it in again with the torque wrench.

Absolutely tight.

Perfect.

My SA guesses that it was really was just the remnants of a stripped bolt that was stuck in the threads of the hole - instead of the hole's threads actually being stripped.

So the tap cleaned the threads well enough that the new bolt went in cleanly.

I am so glad I didn't have to replace the hub!!