This is odd because Wright makes his critical-realist methodology the basis for his reconstruction of the historical narrative (see the summary of his argument from NTPG). At least, I think he would see the critical-realist approach as providing a necessary safeguard against alternative epistemologies (eg., positivist or reductionist) that are likely to produce a serious misreading of the narratives. The question then would be whether the story that he tells about Jesus could have been derived without recourse, implicitly or explicitly, to the sort of hermeneutical tools that he defines in NTPG. I rather suspect that the story is precisely and intrinsically the product of a committed critical-realist epistemology/hermeneutic.