Praise the Lord! It is so good to be in His Word every day, isn't it MrsSpooner? This 30 million shows you're spending a lot of time in His Word! May you and others in your life be blessed by His Word and may we all know Him in our hearts and serve Him with sincerity.
I like Mark a lot. It intrigues me that although Mark's is a much shorter account, he often gives more details than Matthew. (For example, compare Mark 5:1-20 to Matthew 8:28-34). Far more details are given by Mark.
Of course, it's incumbent on me to point out, that Mark refers to only one man, and Matthew to two. I say with all my heart, however, that I consider this to be the infallible Word of God. I make every effort to receive it in that manner. I believe that it is presented to me in the manner in which God has determined and ordained.
Matthew was actually one of Jesus' disciples; so for him, this is an eye-witness account. In Mark's case, according to early church tradition, he was an associate of Peter, and so, perhaps, he got his information second-hand via Peter.
I guess it comes down to what you mean by infallible. Some people, unfortunately, believe that the Bible is without mistake (i.e., inerrancy). Even a casual foray into biblical interpretation will show that there are many, many scribal errors and post-biblical corrections in the ancient manuscripts. Indeed, given the writing conditions for many of these manuscripts, it is not unsurprising that there are over 200,000 spelling and word errors alone (F.F. Bruce addresses many of these in his books, most notably in "The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable?"). The true definition of infallibility is that the Bible is useful for all matters of Christian faith and practice. A document can have errors in it and still overall be trustworthy. Every historical document has errors in it (especially if it has ever been copied) but we still trust their historical narratives today. [As a side note for those concerned with the above revelation, none of these errors or additions add or remove doctrines that do not already exist in the Bible. One can (and should) trust that the text of the Bible we read today is within 98% accurate to the oldest copies of the manuscripts known to exist.]
Frankly, the fact that there are differing opinions about this story points to the fact that the story actually occurred. In other words, if the early Church made up the gospels as some people surmise, one would expect these annoying little differences to be adjusted in the final product. The presence of these differences shows that real people wrote these accounts, but they just happened to remember them differently. Given that the first gospels began to show up 20-30 years after the events described, this is also not unsurprising.
Joosep, your determination about first hand vs. second hand accounts is probably the cause of this discrepancy. Or perhaps the two authors just remembered the details differently. The brain has a way of changing the little details we remember over time. I saw a documentary about people who had experienced 9/11 in the same house as it was happening live on TV. They brought them together years later, and the producers found that people in the same room watching the same broadcasts had widely different remembrances of the events that occurred. None of them, however, disputed that 9/11 happened. Perhaps it is the same thing here.
When I said "infallible" I mean that it has come to us precisely as our Heavenly Father determined and ordained. I'm deliberately choosing to exercise a child-like faith here.
I'm referring to the infallibility of God. He, in His own wisdom, permitted Matthew to refer to two individuals while Mark referred to one individual. He permitted that to take place, and it is my trust and faith that His choice in doing so was and is infallible.
I've also had a similar thought in the past, onfire, that seeming discrepancies do help confirm the fact that these events actually happened and that the accounts written by each author were greatly valued.
It's also worth considering that the actual event was not an orderly sane and sanitized sequence as we might imagine it. If you put the two accounts together, Jesus got out of the boat. He was immediately met by either one or two insane men. These men were "so extremely violent that no one could pass by that way" according to Matthew. This man (or these men) had the habit of "screaming among the tombs and in the mountains, and gashing himself with stones", according to Mark. He (or they) ran up to Jesus and bowed down to Him and shouted "with a loud voice", according to Mark. It was a whirlwind and frightening event. To me it's quite believable indeed that two witnesses would remember something so intensely emotional and frightening with different details, i.e., Matthew says two men, Mark says one.
I erred here, Mark of course was most likely not a witness at all, but he did get his information from someone who was a witness, quite possibly Peter.